


elope with me, miss private

by speedboat



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Breaking Up & Making Up, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Families of Choice, M/M, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, References to Depression, drama in general tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7774843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speedboat/pseuds/speedboat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You didn't have a backup plan if Shitty didn't take you back?” asks Jack, disbelieving.</p><p>“No,” she says, halfway between laughing and crying. “I could always go home.”</p><p>She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t want to hear about how an art degree never got anyone anywhere, she doesn’t want to hear her father talk about her brother getting his diploma a year earlier than planned.</p><p>“You could,” she hears the hesitancy in Jack’s voice and opens her eyes to stare at him. “You could live with me.”</p><p>Lardo’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. “You want me to live with you?”</p><p>Jack looks away, almost shy. “Yeah.”</p><p>“So, me?” she says, for clarification. “Not Bitty, me?”</p><p>or: the year that Lardo lives in Jack's massive NHL bachelor pad and accidentally fixes both of their lives.</p><p>or: Lardo and Jack and the road to redemption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is borderline crack but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ what are ya gonna do?

“We are proud and pleased to present the Samwell Class of 2017!” says Headmaster Mosso and four hundred caps fly in the air, signaling the end of Lardo’s college career. It’s a start, too, she guesses, but right now it mostly feels like an end. A sad and utterly unwelcome end. All her friends seem to have something lined up to pass the time this summer and fall (and the _rest of their lives_ ) and she feels unanchored, like she’s been pushed underwater with no warning.

Her art friends grin when she turns to look at them, and she’s sure the pictures will show her with a pale, sick expression instead of the smiles of everyone around her. She feels flushed and hot under the normally-pleasant May sunshine. The rays of light off the lake seem to shine directly into her eyes, blinding her. She has no idea what she’s going to do with her life, and it doesn’t seem cute or romantic or auspicious anymore.

“Lardo!” someone yells, and she’s yanked out of her reverie, snapping her head around whiplash-quick to find the source.

It’s Ransom, handsome in his cap and gown, jeans and his tacky neon-yellow sneakers underneath.  Holster stands next to him, shielding his eyes from the glare of the pond.

“C’mere!” he calls. “We’re taking a picture.”

Lardo wades through several groups of friends laughing on the lawn to get to them. She brushes her hair out of her eyes, not even sure what she’s self-conscious of. Everyone else looks self-assured and purposeful, like this is just the beginning of their five-year plan. It feels like she has _Art Student In Debt_ carved onto her forehead.

Jack and Bitty flank Ransom and Holster, trying to avoid looking at each other. They stand at an awkward distance apart, the distance of two people who are used to standing close together and now have to re-learn that. Jack is occupied, camera in hand, snapping all sorts of shots with a focused look on his face. He tries to take a candid of her, and she turns away with a grimace.

“Lards,” he says reproachfully, sounding like her dad on their family vacation when she was fourteen and wanted desperately not to be looked at. Every picture in that photo album has the same pouty face she’s making right now. “Let me get a shot.”

She forces a smile, one she hopes he reads as _I’m majorly overstimulated right now, please get me out of here, you of all people should know how I’m feeling_. She makes eye contact, but he misses the cue, probably too distracted himself to try to clear some air for her. “Okay, guys, get into formation,” he says, and she lets Holster and Ransom manhandle her into one last hug. She tries for a smile, but all she can think about is the future, and, sure enough, when she looks on Jack’s digital display later, she has a hunted, grim look on her face.

Bitty and Jack and the rest of the team excuse themselves to go back to the Haus to prepare the last kegster of the year (and probably the last kegster _ever,_ for her), and Holster and Ransom are going out for a joint lunch with their families, and Lardo is left alone on the lawn, in a crowd of people she doesn’t know well, wondering what the hell she’s going to do next.

 

Her parents didn’t come. Which, whatever, she didn’t really expect them to, they hate the idea of art school and have since she first brought it up her junior year of high school. Her brother came down for the day on the train from _Cambridge_ where he goes to _Harvard_ to study _astrophysics._ She tries not to be bitter at Adam for doing exactly what their parents wanted both of them to do, for being the perfect kid to balance out her fuck-ups, and at the same time, she knows her parents wouldn’t have missed Adam’s graduation for anything, let alone a birthday party at their restaurant in Hartford.

 

Because Adam is the perfect everything, he takes her out to lunch and makes excuses for their parents. They eat salty made-by-white-people pho at The Vietnamese Lantern, and he tags her in a bunch of Instagram posts and tells everyone how proud he is of his big sister on, like, twelve different avenues of social media with stupid hashtags she doesn’t really get.

She walks him to the train, makes sure he has his ticket stub and a map so he knows when to get off.

“Call them,” he says into her hair when they hug goodbye. “They love you. They just need some time. Be patient.”

“Love you,” she whispers into his soft sweatshirt that smells like the detergent their mom uses. She doesn’t bring up calling them, because she’s pretty sure she’s not going to. She’s twenty-two. If her parents love her so much, they’ll call.

He cuffs her gently on the back of the head, and she swats him back. “Don’t miss your train, Einstein,” she says sarcastically, and he gives her a smile that’s tinted with a shame that makes her want to cry. “Sorry,” she mutters after a second, wondering when she’d gotten to be such an asshole.

(It’s actually pretty easy to figure out when she became one.)

 

Lardo’s asshole origin story isn’t that shocking. It starts like this: Shitty graduates and asks her out. These two events are in the same day, and Lardo spends two hours on the night of Shitty’s Last College Kegster Ever making out with him in Holster’s chair-swing in the attic while Katy Perry blares downstairs.

And it had been...it had been fun, and she loved him too much to say _I don’t know about this_ or _this is going too fast for me_ when he’d asked with those big, sweet brown eyes.

When he’d touched her collarbone like she was...valuable. Not delicate, or anything else patronizing and patriarchal and icky. But like she mattered to him more than most people.

So they’d hooked up in a fucking chair-swing, and suddenly Lardo was Shitty’s girlfriend without ever really agreeing to it, and they were a couple who went on dates with couples like _Jack and Bitty_ . That was the first six weeks of Lardo’s summer, dates with Shitty and _spooning_ with Shitty and _having sex_ with Shitty, really equitable sex where she had twice the orgasms that he did and foreplay was a must. All with a core of discomfort that sat right in the pit of her stomach the whole time.

And what could she say to anyone? _Shitty treats me with too much respect? I’m not attracted to this guy who loves me for my mind and my body?_ All she knew was that something didn’t feel right, and a month and a half after they’d first hooked up, she’d woken up and moved all her shit out of his apartment in Cambridge and had bolted home to Hartford.

She’d gotten twenty-one texts from Shitty, one a day, starting with a confused _where’d u go?_ and ending with a resigned _idk why ur m.i.a. but im done._

(Not to mention the paragraphs she’d gotten from Ransom, Holster, Johnson, and Bitty, all of whom were appalled and didn’t speak to her through September.)

She’d spent from the Fourth of July until February crying intermittently and hooking up with a girl from Samwell she’d met on Tinder. She didn’t sleep well for months and she let her grades drop. She didn’t turn in one of her final projects until a month after her original extension and still got a D on it. This year has been one of regret and trying to redeem herself: to Shitty, to her friends, to her parents. And so far, it feels like she’s failed.

But tonight is different. Tonight is a kegster and anything is possible. Tonight Shitty is going to be there and this time she’s ready. She’s not afraid. She’s ready. She’s ready for Shitty, if Shitty’s ready for her.

 

She walks back from the train station to the Haus to clear her head, and when she gets back the party is in full swing, full of her fellow seniors and the team, and even LAX bros because miracles can happen, even small ones.

People are everywhere, and despite everything she looks out for Shitty, checking first the Tub Juice tub and then the kitchen where more than thirty people are lighting up using the gas burner.

She wonders for a second if he’s even here, but of course he’s here, he told Bitty he would be and he never flakes on them.

Not like her, she thinks, and shoves the thought immediately out of her head.

 

Of course it’s the last place she looks, just when she’s figured maybe he did flake.

”Have you been avoiding me?” she asks him, jokingly, when she finds him on the front steps.

Shitty gives her a sidelong glance, but he doesn’t move over. She sits down in his space anyways. He’s high, but when isn’t he, and the rush of affection she’d tried to temper since sophomore year, even in Kenya, rushes back. It’s a thrum of excitement and love for him, and maybe she doesn’t want to tamp it down. She’s a little punch-drunk, the way he always seems to make her, as she reaches out to stroke his stupid mustache.

“Lardo,” he says, warm but firm, taking her hand off of his face and giving it back to her. “Lards, I can’t.”

“You can’t what?” she asks, trying to sound flirtatious and giggly.

“I can’t do this thing where you decide you want me for a few days and I totally rearrange my life for you and then you back off. Not anymore.”

“I didn’t do that,” Lardo protests, her face flaming. She feels her smile falter. She totally did that.

“You did do that.”

“This is different. I’m ready now. I like you so much--”

“And I like you, Lards, I was _in love with you_ for a while, but I can’t break up with my girlfriend and change my law school plans again so that you can dump me for a classics major named Ingrid. It’s not fair to me.”

She hangs her head. “I’m sorry. I never meant for you to… I never meant to lead you on, like... I thought we weren’t--”

Lardo mostly just depends on other people to finish her sentences for her when she’s struggling to get them out, but Shitty has never been about putting words in other people’s mouths, and this is no exception. He stares expectantly at her, wanting some sort of explanation.

She doesn’t know what to say. Shitty Knight has never been outwardly angry at her, and now he’s frowning at her, arms crossed. She just wants to go back to the way things were, when he lived at the Haus, before she’d gotten scared and broken things off last June. She doesn’t want him to be civil, she wants him to love her, like she loves him. But there’s no way to just _say that_ without fucking something up.

She leans in, then, and kisses him as tenderly and sweetly as she’s ever kissed anyone. Maybe the touch will explain it, explain her.

She doesn’t want to be away from him anymore.

He’s not deepening the kiss, though, and after a second, he pulls away, and says, “Lardo.”

She opens her eyes.

“I have a girlfriend,” Shitty says. “I can’t kiss you. I’m sorry that you were too late, I am really, _really_ sad about that. But I like Samantha a lot, and I don’t get involved with other people when I like someone.”

The _like you do_ is implied, and more petty than Shitty normally gets. It’s a cheap shot, but Lardo feels it right in her stomach.

“Please respect that,” he says after a few seconds’ pause.

“I got it,” she says, her voice rough.

“Good,” says Shitty, staring out at Samwell’s campus. He’s radiating _leave me alone_ vibes, something Lardo almost never even sees, and has never been directed at her before. It makes tears well up behind her eyes, and she stands abruptly.

“Good luck in Pittsburgh,” she says, vision blurring as she turns to head back into the Haus. He’s silent.

 

She walks through the Haus in a daze, smacking into now-blitzed people left and right. Bitty tries to grab her, but she shakes him off as gently as she can. She just-- she doesn’t even have a place to sleep tonight, she’s already turned her room in the artists’ housing over to a photography major. She’d been planning, if she’s honest, to crash with Shitty, and the idea makes her tear up all over again. She just needs-- she needs a moment alone.

She bumps into solid muscle, and looks up to see Jack frowning down at her.

“Lardo?” he says, staring down at her, concerned. “You okay?”

“N-no,” she says, her voice mangled.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. She shakes her head.

“Just get me out of here,” she says, and he nods, pulling an arm around her and leading her up to the second floor. She starts crying harder as he jimmies the lock to Bitty’s room before leading her in.

She collapses on Bitty’s bed, and he pulls up a chair and sits down next to her.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Jack shakes his head. “Nothing you wouldn’t do for me.”

That much is true. Lardo has rescued Jack from many an awful party scenario, and she gives him a watery smile.

“Shitty?” Jack guesses after she’s stopped crying for a few minutes. She nods, and closes her eyes taking a deep breath.

“I tried to k-kiss him tonight,” she says, hiding her face in embarrassment. “I didn’t know he was still with Samantha,” she says hurriedly, when she peeks at his face and sees his eyebrows raise.

Jack puts a placating hand on her arm. “I wouldn’t care if you had known,” he says. Lardo’s eyes water all over again when she thinks about how nice he’s being to her.

“So, what did he do?” Jack asks.

She shakes her head. “Pushed me away. He was mad I was being so,” she laughs wetly. “Fickle. Because of last summer.”

Jack waits for her to go on.

“And now, when I decide to go for it, he can’t because of _Sam_.” She doesn’t really try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “He’s pissed at me. He told me so.”

“You hurt him,” says Jack diplomatically. “I mean, he’s a carefree guy, Lardo, but there’s only so many times you could expect him to get down on one knee.”

He’s right. Of course he’s right.

“I did hurt him. I was selfish,” Lardo agrees.

“But is that the whole story?” asks Jack. “I was pretty firmly in Shitty’s camp this year, between you and B--Eric , but I don’t think I ever got your side.”

Lardo sighs. “It’s definitely the short version.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” says Jack. “But what you did...I don’t think you’d ghost Shitty without some sort of reason. And I might be able to be a better ear if, uh. If I knew what was going on. The whole story.”

“I--you might think even worse of me,” says Lardo. “If that’s like--”

“I’m not mad at you,” says Jack. “And I promise I won’t think badly of you.”

“Okay,” says Lardo. “I just--like, we moved so fucking fast, Jack. After that last night in the Haus, like, it just felt like we jumped straight on the relationship train and we were fast-tracking towards serious. And we didn’t even really discuss it, which I know is a shitty excuse for what I did--”

Jack shakes his head.

“--And all of a sudden we were really, really serious, and it just felt like too much. Seriously, I mean, he’d like talk about our _kids_ someday and it was so flattering but it was smothering, too. I just felt like I never really got a say in where we were headed and how fast. So I took the emergency exit.”

“That,” says Jack. “That makes a lot of sense. Okay. That makes a lot more sense.”

“I just feel so _bad_ ,” says Lardo. “I feel like the worst person for hurting him, y’know?”

“I know you do,” says Jack. “But I get why you did it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Like he didn’t really ever give you a chance to talk about it. Of course you’d stop feeling like you could slow it down with words. You went into escape mode. Been there, done that.”

Lardo wants to cry all over again at how good it feels to have someone say out loud what she’s been trying to explain for months. He didn’t give her a chance to slow it down.

“Oh, Lards,” he says. He must see the tears that are rising again, because he leans forward in his chair until he’s looking her right in the eyes. “You weren’t selfish. You were overwhelmed. You did the best you could. You just didn’t expect him to move on.”

“Well, either way,” says Lardo. “I’m paying for it. I was going to go to Pittsburgh.” Her face flames. It’s embarrassing, to think about how she’d waltzed in, and thought everything would work out fine, that Shitty would rearrange his whole life for her. “I’m so _stupid._ ”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” says Jack. “You’re not giving yourself room to make mistakes.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Pot, kettle, but I know, Lardo. That shit eats you up after a while.”

“I just feel like I’m not being _hard enough_ on myself. Like, I really fucked up with it. I screwed up the whole team for a while there. Like I still feel like I need to punish myself for what I did, you know?”

Jack looks away, and Lardo imagines he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“Is that what this whole year has been about?” Jack asks after a second. “The whole ‘I gave up my spot at the Senior Art Fair’ thing?”

She imagines her face gives away the answer.

Jack’s face contorts in sympathy. “Lardo,” he whispers. “You gotta forgive yourself for this. I promise, Shitty is going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I bet long-term that even your friendship is going to be okay.”

“But what do I until it is?” Lardo whispers, turning on her side to look at him. “I can’t go to Pittsburgh when he doesn’t want me there.”

“Did you have a backup plan?”

“No,” she says, halfway between laughing and crying. “I could always go home.”

She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t want to hear about how an art degree never got anyone anywhere, she doesn’t want to hear her father talk about her brother getting his diploma a year earlier than planned.

Jack would relate to this if anyone could. He’d mentioned early on in their friendship that he doesn’t like going home or being in his old room, seeing all the trophies and plans for him that he’d fucked up with his anxiety.

Now, his face gives off even more pity, if that’s even possible, and she closes her eyes, leaning back into Bitty’s soft flannel sheets.

“You could,” she hears the hesitancy in Jack’s voice and opens her eyes to stare at him. “You could live with me.”

Lardo’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. “You want _me_ to live with you?”

Jack looks away, almost shy. “Yeah.”

“So, me?” she says, for clarification. “Not _Bitty_ , me?”

“Yes, you,” he says, disgruntled. “And lay off Bitty, okay? It’s over. I know it’s not over for me, but like. That’s my problem. I don’t want him to feel pressured because I can’t get myself under control.”

Lardo is too drunk to choose whether she should direct the conversation towards Jack’s chronic low self-esteem and inability to believe anyone better than Kent Parson could love him, or focus on the whole _you should live with me_ thing, and eventually, Jack says, “You can just say you don’t want to. I won’t get my feelings hurt.”

“Jack,” says Lardo. “Why do you want me to, though?”

She thinks she might already know the answer, and sure enough, it takes just over a minute for him to admit, “I’m pretty lonely in Providence.”

“No kidding,” she says.

 

Jack had lived with an older d-man, Arseny Sarsakova, an A on the team, his rookie year, which sounded like it had been fine, but not great, because Sars couldn’t speak English or French that well, and hadn’t really cared to get to know Jack off the ice. Lardo had driven down for the day a few times with Bitty or Ransom and Holster or the frogs, and Sars had cleared out of the apartment right away.

“He doesn’t care much for people,” Jack had said sheepishly.

There were only two other rookies on the Falconers Jack’s rookie year, and one had been sent down to Westport almost immediately. The other was an eighteen-year-old that made Chowder look relaxed and down-to-earth. It sounded like Jack spent a lot of time alone; alone on the bus, alone on the plane, alone in his room.

Then, when he and Bitty had decided long-distance wasn’t working out, Jack had taken it upon himself to withdraw from Samwell completely. His martyr thought process was that him totally alienating himself would make Bitty’s life easier. Lardo and Ransom and Holster had fretted and sent encouraging texts and tried to visit, but Jack wasn’t having any of it, convinced that him walking out of their lives was somehow going to make Bitty happy. (It hadn’t.)

They could all see it, Jack going increasingly stir-crazy in Providence, with no one to drag him out of his shell or joke with him. Lardo doesn’t know if he’s depressed or not, these days, but she can see the tired bruises under his eyes, the ever-growing frown lines and dimple between his eyebrows.

 

“So are you thinking about it?” he asks, his nervousness showing through his wobbly smile.

“I just... “ Lardo hesitates. “I feel like I’d be totally dependent on you, then. I just got out from under my parents’ feet, and I’d only be relying on somebody else instead. I don’t want to, to do that again. I want to prove I can make it, even without a shitty astrophysics degree.”

“Just think about it,” says Jack. “There are, like, galleries near my apartment, and I have two extra bedrooms, and I really, _really_ don’t mind.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lardo agrees, patting his arm. “You think Bitty’s gonna mind if I crash here?”

“Nah,” says Jack, and swallows loudly.

“What, Jack?” she teases. “Were you planning to sleep here?”

Jack frowns instead of elbowing her like she’d expected, and, after a minute, volunteers, “He’s actually making out with Cameron Sutter right now. Downstairs.”

“The _lacrosse_ bro? Ugh, insult to injury, that sucks, Jack.”

Jack shrugs, looking all of nine years old with his sad puppy eyes, and Lardo scoots over to make room for him on the bed. He gets in after he pulls off his shoes, and snuffles immediately into the pillow. She turns over, and tries to close her eyes before she thinks about…

...about Shitty.

Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m like a millionaire," Jack says. "Why would I make you pay rent?”  
> “Because otherwise it's too generous,” Lardo says with finality. “Who’s going to clean? Who does the dishes? Who buys groceries?”  
> Jack shrugs. “My cleaning service, my dishwasher, and me.”  
> “You have a dishwasher?”  
> “Like the appliance,” Jack says, defensive. “Not like a person who washes my dishes.”
> 
> or: Lardo and Jack negotiate their terms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone for the support on chapter 1! i definitely felt the love.
> 
> (also, fair warning, there is frank discussion of mental illness and addiction in this chapter)

Jack wakes up in Eric’s bed the next morning, and for a second everything feels six months old, like he’s going to look over and see Eric’s sleepy morning face and he’ll go get him a tripleshot-salted-caramel-frap from the campus coffee shop and bring it to him in bed and lick the taste out of his mouth.

He doesn’t. He lets his head flop sideways and sees Lardo, hair mussed and drooling on one of Eric’s pillows.

And shit, shit, shit, this is like, the opposite of ex-etiquette. This is a direct violation; he’s sleeping in Eric’s bed like a creepy stalker. He’s had his nose in the scent of Eric’s pillow, his shampoo and, underneath, _him_ , all night long. That was probably how he slept so well. Even worse is the stinging realization that he wants to stay there, and he can’t. He wants this back so badly, and he can’t get it back.

Like every morning, he forces himself to sit up, fully open his eyes, and face the morning. Things slide into focus, slow but unyielding, and Jack finds himself exactly where he’s been for the past six months. The stark reality is that he still isn’t with Eric, and his joints still ache and the Falconers were still a first-round exit and he still can’t take a pill to numb all those truths. He wakes up every morning and he’s _still fucking alive_ in this gray world where nothing goes right.

Gingerly, he moves from sitting to standing. His knees pop as he brings his full weight upon them.

He heaves a deep sigh, wiggling his toes and asking his body to do its job, to work for him today. Crosby had suggested it, at some leadership summit they’d all been asked to attend last October: firing up his body and his brain like they were his teammates, like he was the leader of himself. He remembers that he’d texted Eric as soon as he’d left the seminar, recapping all the ideas he’d heard about team building that Eric could pass on to Ransom and Holster.

That was October. This is May. He asks his brain to stay calm, to stay focused, to stay on the wagon.

The lack of color is staggering in a place he hasn’t been in a while. He can feel the full effect of his depression here; the Haus used to practically radiate warm light; it felt like home and family and acceptance and love. Now, it’s as drab and washed-out as everything else Jack sees, and it makes him want to die.

It’s felt this way for months, and he knows it’s manageable if he asks for help. He knows he could find a therapist. He knows he could fix it, but his anxiety seems to sit on top of him, preventing him from making any moves.

It just feels like all the good drained out of his life sometime after Christmas. It’s not necessarily replaced by bad; it’s not like Jack’s crying himself to sleep every night. But every morning, there’s the heavy feeling that there’s nothing to be excited for. He ruminates in a way he hasn’t since before the draft: what if management finds out and trades him? What if he ends up traded somewhere where good people aren’t a two-hour drive away? What if he’s put up for trade and no one wants him?

There’s just nothing to look forward to anymore. He’ll eat oatmeal and eggs for breakfast. He’ll go to work. He’ll eat two boiled chicken breasts and brown rice for lunch. He’ll work out. He’ll sleep. He’ll die alone someday.

He creaks down the hall and starts on the stairs, feeling old and tired. He misses the smell of Eric, the brief moment this morning when he’d woken up and believed all was well. He thinks about popping a Xan, just for a minute, like he does most mornings now. He hasn’t taken his bottle with him, but he’s sure there are still a few hidden in the bathroom in a film cannister lodged between two pipes.

_That’s not productive thinking,_ he tells himself. _That isn’t healthy. That would hurt other people. That would hurt you._

He wants to feel something.

Over the years of living here, in the Haus, Jack had gotten used to holding and being held when he was anxious. He wonders where Shitty’s sleeping, if he can pester him. It had taken him a while to warm to it, that first year when Shitty had clung too tight to him and all it did was dredge up was memories of him and Kent and how he’d fucked up. But somewhere along the way Jack had learned to relax into it, to lean into touch. After a while, an arm around his shoulder (almost any arm, really) felt like sitting in the sun.

He wants to warm up, to thaw out, to see things as bright and saturated and love-soaked as they probably really are.

Shitty will help. No one’s touched him for longer than a celly or a quick hug in months. Being in bed with Lardo had been cathartic in that he’d realized exactly what he’d been missing: human contact.

The Haus is trashed, and Jack tiptoes carefully around the rooms, checking for Shitty.

There are two puddles of puke, three lax bros sleeping on the floor, and no Shitty.

_U left????_ He texts Shitty, heading outside to get away from the chaotic interior.

Shitty replies immediately. Jack guesses he’s at his internship, where he’s basically a glorified barista to his dad’s law office, three days a week, for some extra cash.

_Yeah._

_Thought u took off work?_

_Went back early_ . Then, _shit went down. Idk._

_Lardo?_

_Yeah…...U talk to her?_

Before Jack can type a reply, Shitty writes, _bc lemme tell u dude, she was so fucking over my boundaries. Didn’t even give a shit whether I wanted to or not. Typical._

 

Jack has had hours of “Typical Lardo” venting sessions with Shitty over this past year. He’s replied sympathetically: in flights grounded for weather, on a yacht owned by his alternate captain, in between squats at the gym.

Because Lardo pissed Shitty off when she did what she did. It was in violation of everything Shitty stood for: direct communication, addressing problems at their roots, and not fucking with people.

(Although, Jack thinks, for all Shitty’s talk about direct communication, he really kind of fucked up when it mattered.)

And what Shitty was much less likely to admit unless he was stoned or drunk was that Lardo had hurt Shitty. She’d really hit the jugular when she’d cut off all communication, stopped answering his texts. Shitty talks a lot of game about being in touch with emotions, not tuning them out or mixing them up, but he is a WASP, born and raised, and all this “pissed off at Lardo” crap is his way of licking the wounds she inflicted. From where Shitty saw it, Lardo had led him up Relationship Mountain, gotten him all ready to take a leap, vulnerable without even knowing it, and then she’d pushed him off with no parachute.

And Jack has been there for him, the whole way. They all have, willing to text and Skype their support, their allegiance.

He scrolls back up on his conversation with Shitty, into late March, which had been Shitty’s last real outburst of anger that Jack had gotten to hear.

_What a fuckna bithc,_ Shitty had written, clearly very drunk, and Jack feels a knot in his stomach when he reads his sober reply.

_I know, dude...You’re better than this._

They’ve all been so busy supporting Shitty, just being there after this messy breakup.

Who’s been there for Lardo? Who’s held her up?

 

Jack doesn’t reply to Shitty’s text, and he climbs the stairs to Bitty’s bedroom, knocking gently before walking in the room, sitting down on the bed and sliding himself under the covers again. Lardo sits up and looks blearily at him, like she thinks this might be a dream or a hallucination.

“I have been such a _shitty_ friend to you,” Jack says. “And I am so, so sorry you had to deal with this all on your own.” Because speeches aren’t really his thing, he opens his arms as an extension of the apology, and, to his surprise, Lardo leans in immediately, pitching her head forward onto Jack’s chest.

She gives a little hiccup and Jack somehow feels even more like shit, because Lardo’s fucking crying. Sober.

“Lards,” he soothes, or tries to, wrapping an arm around her. Like Bitty but bone, not lean muscle.

“Everyone hated me,” whispers Lardo. “No one would listen to me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, because what else can he say? “Lardo. I’m so sorry.”

 

Because the Haus is a total wreck, Jack and Lardo go out for coffee to iron out the details of their plan.

“I didn’t just suggest it because I was drunk,” Jack insists the third time Lardo asks. “I wasn’t even drinking last night.”

“Okay,” Lardo says, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I don’t know how to make this any clearer,” Jack continues. “I have two empty spare rooms and no one to put in them. I have houseplants that need watering. This would practically be you doing me a favor.”

“But I mean,” says Lardo. “We need to get some things on paper, if this is actually happening. A lot of things.”

“Like?”

“Like how much rent I’m going to pay.”

“None.”

“Jack, that’s ridiculous.”

“Why?” Jack asks. “I’m like a millionaire. Why would I make you pay rent?”

“Because that’s too generous,” Lardo says with finality. “Who’s going to clean? Who does the dishes? Who buys groceries?”

Jack shrugs. “My cleaning service, my dishwasher, and me.”

“You have a _dishwasher_?”

“Like the appliance,” Jack says, defensive. “Not like a person who washes my dishes.”

Lardo takes a contemplative sip of her latte and tries another approach.

“Jack,” she starts, trying to be diplomatic. “With that arrangement, I’m never going to feel comfortable living with you. I would feel guilty. Don’t--” she holds up a hand as he opens his mouth to argue. “Interrupt. I would feel totally indebted to you. And I’d never feel like I had any autonomy or ownership while I lived there.”

Jack nods. “That makes sense.”

“So a thousand a month?” Lardo proposes, trying to highball.

“Can I explain my thinking?” Jack asks.

“Sure.”

“Money--like, don’t get weird, okay--but money isn’t an issue to me. I know that’s a total lame-white-dude line, but. It’s the truth. I’m never gonna have to worry about it. And you do, and it doesn’t seem fair to make you pay me money when you could be using it to get your foot in the door in your career. And you’ve helped me out a lot over the years. So I want to return the favor.”

“But--”

“Let _me_ finish. I get the whole autonomy thing is an issue, though. So you can do some of the cleaning, _if_ you let me give you a room rent-free.”

“That--” Jack has a look on his face like he isn’t going to budge, and Lardo gives in. It _is_ a huge advantage to not have to pay rent. “That’s so over-the-top generous. Thank you. I wish you’d let me do more, and eventually we’ll figure it out, but in the meantime...That’ll work.”

“Okay,” Jack says, giving her a pleased smile. “That was our first, like. Conflict resolution.” He holds up his hand, and Lardo slaps a high five.

“There’s something else,” Lardo adds after a minute of pleased silence. “We need to get Bitty on board.”

Jack’s smile fades a little. “He’s not going to care,” he says, looking down. “He’s over me.”

“That’s not even close to true and you know it,” Lardo tells him. “And he and I just got back to a good place, after…” she shakes her head. “He’d be pissed if I didn’t ask and I wouldn’t blame him.”

“Okay,” Jack says reluctantly.

“We’ll figure everything else out if I get his blessing,” Lardo says. She raises her to-go cup, and Jack clinks his against it.

“To roomies,” she says.

“To roomies.”

 

“I only have a few hours before my flight,” says Bitty around a yawn when he sits down at Lardo’s table in the cafe a few hours later. “And someone was in my room all night with the door locked from the inside, so I had to sleep on Dex’s floor. Not a great night for beauty sleep. I just finished packing.”

Lardo picks guiltily at her sweater sleeve.

“About that,” she starts. Bitty must hear the change in her tone, because he snaps to attention and leans forward in his seat.

“Was that you and Shitty?” he asks in a whisper. “Because _gross_ , y’all, my nonna knitted the afghan on my bed.”

“No,” Lardo hisses. “Shitty was super pissed at me last night.”

For a split second, a shadow of an expression crosses Bitty’s face. It’s his judgy one; eyebrows raised and mouth curled into a heavy frown. It says “Of course he’d still be mad, you flaming harlot” without so many words and Lardo had been on the receiving end of it the entirety of first semester. She hasn’t seen it in a while, but it causes anger to shoot white-hot into her face, remembering those months of judgment from everyone on the team, and before she can rephrase it, she blurts out, “I was with Jack.”

There’s a better way to lead into that, a way that explains “just as friends” and “comforting me” but Lardo feels a vicious need to see Bitty hurt, just for a few seconds.

She knows where his goat is tied. Bitty recoils like he’s been slapped. Immediately, his eyes start to well up, and Lardo feels like shit.

“What in the hell is wrong with you people?” Bitty asks thickly, and pulls back his chair. When he jumps up, it clatters to the ground, the noise causing the whole cafe to turn to look at them.

He strides out, the door slamming behind him, and Lardo rushes after him, calling “Bitty, wait!” and not caring who stares.

Bitty’s fast, but she catches up to him in her sheer will not to lose his friendship. His hands are stuffed deep in his pockets. She tries to put a hand on his shoulder and he shoves her, violently, off.

“Bitty,” she pleads. “Bitty Bitty Bitty not like that at all.”

“Go jump in a lake,” Bitty spits.

“No no no no. Not in a sex way. Not in a romantic way. Not anything like that.”

Bitty keeps walking away from her.

“Bitty!” she yells, and it must startle him, because he pauses. Lardo is quick to interject.

“He took me up to your room because I was so upset over Shitty. Nothing nothing nothing happened. We talked about you and we fell asleep.”

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Bitty mumbles, “Honest?”

“Honest.”

“Why’d you phrase it like that, then?” Bitty asks her.

“I...I don’t know,” Lardo replies, covering her face with her hands. “And you know that would never happen, okay, for several reasons. One of which being that you’re one of my best friends and I’d never do that to you.”

“I figured,” Bitty says, scuffing the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Sorry about this. It just wasn’t a great night, and that got the best of me.”

“It’s okay,” Lardo says, knocking their shoulders together. “How was your night, anyways?” She waggles her eyebrows so he’ll get her drift.

“Ugh,” Bitty gives a grimace. “God, he had the worst-tasting mouth ever. I usually don’t kiss and tell, but. Yuck. And I know Jack saw me, too, which was dumb. I felt real bad.”

“He’s a big boy.”

“I just…” Bitty looks helpless. “When I thought you two were...eventually it’s going to happen, you know? Jack’s gonna move on and I’m going to have to get used to it. Not with my best friend, hopefully, but. I need to start trying to get on with my life, too.”

“I mean…” Lardo says. “He has like a seven year refractory period. You’re the first since Parse, and you were actually, like, a good fucking person to him. Could be a while.”

Eric gives a sad smile. “I shouldn’t want it to be a long time, though. I should want to be happy for him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Lardo says. “I know you haven’t really been in a relationship, so I just gotta say, friendly exes are not a thing.”

Bitty shrugs. “If he won’t let me love him...I at least want to be his friend. I want to be in his corner somehow.”

“Bitty,” Lardo gives a sympathetic hum.

“And I’m sorry,” Bitty says, moving closer to her and squeezing her arm. “You’re not a bad person.”

“Yeah, I am,” Lardo says heavily. “Just not for that. I need to ask you something.”

 

When she tells Bitty about the arrangement, she sees his jaw clench. She feels like she’s ruined their relationship all over again, and she starts to say “Never mind” when he stops her.

“Lards,” he says resignedly. “You have to do it. It’s an amazing opportunity.”

“No I don’t,” she says. This is true. If Bitty’s not happy with it she’ll be on the first train back to Hartford.”

“ _Yes,_ you _do_ ,” he repeats, sounding almost sure of himself, _almost_ happy for her. “You’d be a starving artist without starving. I can’t let you starve.”

“No, Bits, I like ramen. I’d be fine,” Lardo tries to joke.

He gives her a sad smile. “Do me a favor?” he asks her.

“Anything.”

“Make sure he’s taking care of himself. Eating, taking his meds, y’know. I’d do it myself, but that’s clearly not something he’s interested in anymore.”

“Bitty--”

“Sorry,” Bitty says with one quick sniff. He looks up with a smile that’s about half real. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m happy for you.”

“He wants you,” Lardo tells him, sincerely. “He just doesn’t know how to let himself have you.”

 

Jack doesn’t know how he’s going to spin this to Shitty. Shitty’s pretty anti-Lardo these days, and it’s just...it’s exhausting. Now that he’s seen how it affected her, it pisses him off that he hurt Lardo this much because he got wrapped up in this whole borderline “bros before hoes” thing.

Finally, he calls Shitty.

“Jay-Z,” Shitty picks up on the third ring. “You and Bitty getting back together? You freaking out?”

“ _No_ ,” Jack rolls his eyes. “I’m. Well.”

“Always have your bro’s back” is Shitty’s favorite bylaw of the Haus, and, to give credit where credit is due, it’s kept him and Shitty close through the years when things have threatened to pull them away. Shitty was super impressed by Kent after his Cup visit, but when Jack had explained their...precarious relationship, Shitty had lost Kent’s number immediately. Jack wonders for a minute if this is similar.

But it’s definitely not. Because Lardo isn’t on Kent’s level of abusive or manipulative or mean. And because she’s Jack’s bro, too. And because Shitty needs to start to process the actual emotions under that protective layer of bitterness.

It’s time for some tough love, Jack decides.

“I’m letting Lardo move into my place this year,” he says. “And it doesn’t mean I’m picking sides, okay, it means I’m done being on a side. You’re two of my oldest friends, period. From now on you have to keep the fighting between you two.”

“I--” Shitty blows air out from puffed cheeks.

“And you have to stop treating her like she’s ruined your life,” Jack continues, too fast. “At least in front of me, because you have a pretty easy life, Shits.”

Shitty groans, and then he says, “Alright” with what Jack thinks might even be good humor.

That’s it? Jack had expected a standoff.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Shitty says. He sounds a little embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to make you think you were in the middle.”

“Thanks.”

“No prob.” Shitty sighs again and changes the subject. “So fuckin’ boring here, Jack. Saving the world better be a lot cooler than this.”

“Think it will be,” Jack reassures. “And even if it’s not, do it anyway.”

Shitty laughs, and then peters off into awkward silence.

“Hey, Jack…” Shitty finally says. “I’m sorry I put you in this position. And thanks for, uh. For sticking up for her. I know I’ve been too hard on her.”

“She just got scared.” Jack tells him. “It was a mistake.”

“I know. We all make ‘em,” Shitty says with a sigh. “But I can’t drop everything for her, y’know? I gotta do what’s best for me.”

“But if you change your mind…”

“What about you changing your mind?” Shitty asks, teasing. He also sounds like he’s evading the Lardo thing, but Jack has said his piece. He can throw Shitty this bone. “Bitty and Jack, kissing in a tree--”

“Pretty sure that’s over,” Jack stops him, trying to ignore the hurt clench in his stomach. “He was kissing in a tree with someone else last night.”

“But that doesn’t mean--”

“I just…” Jack interrupts. He feels like going back to bed again. He’s so fucking tired. “I’m not really in a place to put myself on the line.”

“I know,” Shitty says. “Trust me, bro, if anyone knows, I do.”

Jack swallows.

“You made an appointment yet?” Shitty asks softly.

Jack shakes his head and then remembers he’s on the phone. “Not yet.”

“You want me to come down to Providence?” Shitty offers. “Go to the appointments with you until you’re on a schedule?”

Even through the fog of his depression, Jack has a sudden blinding gratitude for Shitty being in his life.

“I don’t think so,” Jack says. “But that might change. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay,” Shitty says. “Take care of yourself, Jack. And call me if you think you’re gonna slip.”

“I’m okay for now.”

“Love you, Jack Laurent.”

“You’re my best friend,” Jack says, words tumbling out before he can stop himself. “Thank you.”

There was a time in Jack’s life when he would have frozen at those words, or gotten all “no homo.” Now, though, they’re a casual reassurance to him, that there are people who care about him, even if Eric isn’t one of them.

“Stay classy, Zimmermann,” Shitty says. “Fuck, that’s my dad. I gotta go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the record, if an NHL superstar offered to be my platonic sugar daddy I would not try to talk him out of it for a MOMENT


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What is that thing?" Jack had asked when she'd hung it from her door. He sounded repulsed.
> 
> "My lantern."
> 
> "It kind of…clashes? Don't you think?"
> 
> So did Jack's eight (eight!) pairs of shoes cluttered around his doormat, but Lardo had tried not to weaken her case by pissing him off.
> 
> "It's good luck," Lardo said.
> 
> "Luck is stupid," said Jack, and Lardo rolled her eyes. "Luck is for people who don't have the talent to make things happen for themselves."
> 
> (This from a guy who tapes his stick counter-clockwise on game days.)
> 
> "Look," said Lardo. "I want it out there. You don't. How are we gonna figure this out?"
> 
> "I don't know," Jack said, exasperated. Lardo couldn't believe she'd forgotten that he's an only child. "I have a meeting with our GMs in an hour. Can't you just take it down?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has truly been an odyssey, but I'm back! apologies for the literal six-month wait but life got wild and really did. not. stop. 
> 
> fortunately, life events have cleared significantly as of a few weeks ago! so updates should be somewhat regular. 
> 
> also, please know that Jack's depression and addiction are a pretty major part of this fic. mild discussion of mental illness is pretty standard. just a blanket warning. stay safe and know your limits, y'all. ;-)

Lardo frowns, staring at the blank expanse of wall in front of her. It’s clinical-white, clearly the same color Jack moved into.

It's depressing, and when she'd pointed that out over breakfast yesterday, Jack hadn't even heard her, absorbed in tape and his quinoa grain-bowl.

In fact, Jack’s apartment (their apartment) still looks like he just moved in. Their landlord could show it tomorrow. Jack’s been in here for five months, since the Falconers’ playoff run ended, and there are no signs that anyone lives here, other than the pile of Lardo's dirty clothes on the couch she has to take to the laundromat later.

Minimalism makes Lardo anxious. It feels austere and otherworldly, like she’s being monitored in some government facility. She likes conversation-starters on her walls, she likes magazines on her coffee tables, she likes some evidence that humans live with her.

Jack has provided _that_ , in the form of the insanely smelly pads that clutter the entryway. Lardo has had years to get used to hockey stink, but she still doesn’t understand how someone can imprint that much of a stench on something. Her three boxes of baking soda doesn’t even start to match up to the fumes that Jack brings home.

This apartment just…doesn't feel like them. Like anyone, really. Lardo imagines some photos on the fake mantel under the TV, maybe a painting on the wall? Some salt and pepper shakers shaped like Russian nesting dolls or, like, a tapestry?

Furthermore, she can't find a place to put her lantern.

 

The lantern in question is from her grandmother, Bà Phan, who had looked at Lardo's sketches years ago when she'd come from Vietnam to visit Lardo's family. Bà Phan, her mother's mother, had seen potential in her, and she hadn't been shy or coy about her wish to see Lardo become an artist.

Of course, Lardo's  parents had quashed any contact between them the minute they dropped her grandma off at JFK, but the lesson had stuck with her: you could be happy without doing what pleased others. Which, evidently, Bà Phan knew well, if Lardo's mom's pinched expression said anything.

The idea of pleasing herself over her parents had gotten Lardo through years of dyed hair and breaking curfew and applying to art school. And the silky purple lantern Bà Phan had given her were a symbol of that rebellion.

That lantern hung above Lardo's door as a teenager. It followed her to her dorm and home and back for four years. It's her good luck charm, and it's seen her off on first dates, job interviews, and funerals.

"What is that thing?" Jack had asked when she'd hung it from her door. He sounded repulsed.

"My lantern."

"Can you maybe, like. Put it somewhere else?"

"Excuse me?"

"It kind of…clashes? Don't you think?"

So did Jack's eight (eight!) pairs of shoes cluttered around his doormat, but Lardo had tried not to weaken her case by pissing him off.

"It's good luck," Lardo said.

"Luck is stupid," said Jack, and Lardo rolled her eyes. "Luck is for people who don't have the talent to make things happen for themselves."

(This from a guy who tapes his stick counter-clockwise on game days.)

"Look," said Lardo. "I want it out there. You don't. How are we gonna figure this out?"

"I don't know," Jack said, exasperated. Lardo couldn't believe she'd forgotten that he's an only child. "I have a meeting with our GMs in an hour. Can't you just take it down?"

"No!"

It was Jack's turn to roll his eyes.

"We'll talk later," he grumbled, and retreated to his room, probably to brood.

 

Jack's meeting is delayed by some low-profile trade that Jerry Anderson, the Falconers' GM, is orchestrating. It sounds like farm team and fourth line players, a bunch of names Jack thinks he should know but don’t actually ring much of a bell. And, of course, he’s busy, because his mind immediately jumps to _what if it’s me? What if they trade me? To the Oilers? And not even for someone good?_

Jack takes a deep breath and tries to steel himself against the negativity. He’s not fourth line, he’s not going to be traded, and the Oilers’ GM has a grudge against Jerry Anderson a mile long for some rift back when they both still played. These are all true, logical things he tells himself, things that make sense, and yet he still can’t quite erase the worry from his mind.

Across Anderson’s desk, Jack sees his brow furrow.

“No,” he says, sounding confused. “Why would I--”

A second later, he lets out a low whistle. “For that low? What’d he do, Finley, put vodka in his water bottle?”

Jack raises his eyebrows.

“I mean,” Anderson says, and he makes a gesture to Jack to get out of the office. “You realize what that would mean for us offensively.”

Jack strains to hear the next thing Anderson says as he gets up out of the chair and walks out of the room, but the distance makes it too hard to hear. All Jack can parse out is:

1) There’s deal on the table for someone on the Aces’ offense.

2) He’s a problem kid.

3) From Anderson’s hushed but incredulous tones, he’s cheap.

Which means:

4) Any underperformers from offense are, in fact, in danger of being traded,

5) to the Aces.

 

That line of apparently-now-true thought has been the stuff of Jack’s wildest anxiety-riddled dreams for years now; ever since he really got over Parse the summer before his sophomore year at Samwell. And there’s the Parson-Zimmermann-No-Look-Special, which is fun, okay, and maybe they can revive it at an All Star Game one day, but it isn’t what Jack wants anymore.

 _Kent_ isn’t what Jack wants anymore, and he’s tried to tell him, to show him, even, why they aren’t right for each other. But placed back in Vegas, far away from everyone who can reaffirm that, far away from the memory of Eric and what actually felt like love, not just infatuation, Jack could see himself falling right back into old habits.

Maybe Kent is the wild child, Jack thinks. When they’d talked for a few minutes at the ESPYs, his drug of choice had been hot yoga and a dark, brooding model who was there to “present an award” and would probably end up in Kent’s limo later, but Jack’s seen Kent pretty messed up before, and with the smallest things totally tipping the scale for him. How funny would that be, if Jack went for Kent, he thinks, a little hysterical.

He doesn’t really see another option; he calls Kent.

Kent never picks up on Jack the first time, preferring to wait until the second call on the third ring to pick up, always feigning nonchalance and _who is this anyway?_ It both irritates Jack and makes his skin prickle in guilt, because the mind games Kent plays with him come from years of Jack drawing him in and then rejecting him, of making him feel like he was important and then yanking that away from him.

It’s anxiety and addiction, mostly, that did that, and Jack feels bad pretty regularly about Kent taking the brunt of that on when he was-- they were-- so young.

Jack gets his answering machine, a ridiculous message involving his cat.

He hits redial, and waits until the third ring, when Kent picks up, sounding out of breath but also very fake.

“Who is this?” Kent asks, and Jack can’t help but roll his eyes.

“It’s Jack.”

“Oh, hey,” says Kent, clearly trying to sound busy. “Listen, I only have a few minutes--”

“Good, me too,” Jack cuts him off. There’s only so much dysfunction he can handle on a given day. “Who’s your problem child?”

“What?”

“Our GM is talking about trading for whoever the trainwreck is on your team. Apparently he’s cheap and good in offense. Is it you, or Sribnik?”

“Neither,” Kent says. “Ribby’s grown up in the past year, and he was never trade material.”

“Anderson was talking with Finley,” Jack says. “He definitely said something about a problem off-ice.”

“Oh,” says Kent knowingly. “Dougie.”

“Aaron Douglas has an off-ice issue?” Jack says disbelievingly. Douglas is like 40; he was a rookie with Jack’s dad the year he retired.

Kent sighs. “Promise not to tell anyone?”

Jack rolls his eyes again. His team barely talks to him; who would he tell?

“Promise.”

“He got into a fight in the locker room towards the end of last season. I guess he’s just salty he’s never won a Cup or something, I don’t know. It was kind of a temper tantrum, he just kind of leapt on Simmy, of all people, gave him a split lip. It was sad. Pissed Finley off.”

Jack groans internally. This is probably who they’re going to trade for, a whiny veteran who’s past his damn prime.

“Thanks, Parse,” he says.

“No problem,” Kent says. “I’ll keep you updated.”

He won’t.

Kent doesn’t text him and Jack doesn’t blame him for that; on his old phone, there was a string of about a hundred messages Jack received in rehab and after that went unanswered.

Everyone has a breaking point, and Kent has almost reached his with Jack.

 

Providence is really beautiful; Lardo had always pictured a depressed, gray smokestack of a city, brimming with smog and racist dudes who like football.

Even when they’d visited Jack they’d done it in midwinter and everything had been dirty snow and barren trees and cold concrete. She’s never seen Providence in the summer, though, with a warm, white light shining down and creative people everywhere in Jack’s neighborhood: sidewalk drummers and muralists and baristas with cool body art.

She immediately feels bad for having misjudged it and vows to give it the love it deserves at some point this year, even if it’s just in one painting. She isn’t sure what she wants to do for her next series, if she even wants to start another instead of just letting paint hit the canvas without a plan. Today, she tells herself, is just about getting back in the saddle.

Jack lives in a weirdly bohemian neighborhood, filled with art galleries and cute coffee shops and bakeries that are called “boulangeries.” Lardo has always considered him more of a suburbs guy, and after a little she comes to the conclusion that this is for Bitty, the neighborhood and the state-of-the-art oven in their condo.

Which is fucking sad, considering Jack is the one who broke up with him.

 

Lardo watches Jack warily as he walks in the door from his meeting. He brushes past her to get a sandwich from the fridge without any greeting, frown lines deep in his forehead.

“How was your meeting?” she asks eventually, because she’s classy and a good friend.

“Fine,” says Jack, in a way that distinctly implies that it wasn’t.

“Okay,” Lardo says primly. She’s in the mood to pry. “So I think I’ve found a place for my lantern.”

Jack groans. Lardo decides to ignore his rude ass.

“The kitchen.”

“Fine,” Jack says. “I really don’t care.”

There’s pointed silence.

“Did something happen to you?” Lardo asks eventually. “At your meeting?”

Jack lets out a long sigh. “I don’t know,” he says. “There are trade talks with the Aces.”

“You think they’re going to trade Kent?” she asks, incredulous.

“No,” says Jack. “Even worse, at least Kent would be good for the team. This is some whiny veteran who attacked an A in the locker room because he didn’t like how he was playing.”

Lardo makes a face.“Why use the cap space?”

“No idea,” Jack admits. “I mean, Douglas is a good player, won the Calder, whatever, but we don’t need someone like that in the room, y’know? Things are weird enough without him.”

Lardo stills, trying not to be obvious about it. This is the first time Jack has admitted the locker room is anything other than fine, which it obviously is. Jack has no friends on the team and the team’s chemistry is visibly fucked on the ice, but he doesn’t bring it up.

“That sucks,” she says, trying to keep him talking, but the candid sharing is evidently over as quick as it started, because Jack just shrugs and opens the fridge, rummaging around to find his bland-ass meal plan-approved beef and broccoli.

“You worried?” Lardo tries again. “About the team? Are you feeling--”

“I feel like there are a hundred bats trying to flap their way out of my stomach,” Jack interrupts. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it, I want to be alone.”

Lardo snaps her mouth shut, shooting him the best laser-pointer glare she can before turning on her heel to grab her art supplies. She ignores the hang of Jack’s head, and, more annoying, the stab of concern for him that needles her as she gives the door a satisfying slam. She didn’t sign up to be a counselor, to be yelled at for showing some basic concern for a friend. The feeling of indignance centralizes behind her forehead, propelling her down Radcliffe, headed for the community garden off of Davis Park.

She’s going to goddamn paint today. She’s going to paint and she isn’t going to take any shit. She’s going to find herself again. She’s not going to be lost for another _minute_.

 

Jack watches Lardo leave, still sulking over her nosiness. He knows she’s trying to help, okay, he gets that in theory, but friends don’t need to tell each other everything. He knows she’s picked up on the way that his teammates don’t like him much, keeps trying to get him to talk through his feelings, but he doesn’t _want_ to talk.

It’s like… he already feels like a loser, alright? Everything about this team reminds him of the desperation he’d felt the first few months of Juniors, before he’d gotten close with Kent, vodka, and Xanax. But acknowledging that loneliness and rejection is just...out of the question, the way Jack was raised. He was brought up, both by his parents and, as an adolescent, by Junior League culture, to hide his weakness, bury it any way possible. After his overdose, his parents had tried to rewrite that family policy, and Shitty, later, had earned his trust enough for Jack to open up little by little.

Still, it doesn’t come naturally. And someone asking him to admit he’s weak is just... it makes him build up his walls, makes him push people away.

For the hundredth time, Jack thinks about finding a counselor. He should open up his phone and google _therapist Providence_ , he should call Shitty and ask him to come up and help him, like Shitty offered.

Even the thought tires Jack. He heaves a sigh and drops his head to rest on his arms.

He’ll do it later. _I will_ , he snaps to the voice that sounds like Lardo in his head. _I’m not making excuses. It’s hard. Depression is hard._ Life _is hard._

 _Life doesn’t have to be hard,_ not-Lardo says. _You make it harder for yourself. Call a therapist._

 _No,_ Jack thinks viciously, and shoves the thought out of his head, tossing the beef and broccoli back into the fridge before grabbing his keys and going to the building’s gym to run his anxiety off.

 

Lardo honestly starts off looking at a shiny red tomato on the vine, intending to do some detail work, but the energy she’d had leaves her hands within a few minutes, and she soon feels just as discouraged as she has the rest of the year. Dammit.

Painting has been Lardo’s thing since elementary school. She’d won an award in the sixth grade and had gotten to meet the governor of Connecticut for a painting she’d done of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War hero, for a school contest. After that award and the assurance from others that Lardo was actually good at art, better than most kids her age even, her parents had let her take art classes outside of school, and she’s kind of had the bug ever since.

Except for this year, when her paints had collected dust in the studio and she’d forgotten to do her damn thesis. She’s had the yips for months, if she’s honest, ever since she and Shitty stopped being best friends.

It’s not like Shitty was her _muse_ or anything; his fucking pornstache doesn’t _inspire_ her, but it had been so easy, after being featured in Samwell’s all-class art show her junior year, to give up painting. She’d been holding out some hope on the Shitty front, that maybe if they’d gotten together she would have been able to get back into it, but now they haven’t gotten together, and she’s afraid she’s never going to paint again if she doesn’t do it today.

Lardo takes a deep breath. This is ridiculous. She’s not some romantic poet, she’s not going to be struck with inspiration just sitting here.

She has to do something. Even if its shi--crappy. Even if it’s ugly. Even if it’s not marketable.

 _Today’s the day,_ Lardo tells herself. _You can do this. You can do this even without him._

She closes her eyes, takes a deep, stomach-filling breath. The wind kisses her skin and the sun warms her shoulders and she _can_ do this. She takes the tube of Mixed White and unscrews the lid, wincing at the dried-on film that’s formed in her absence. She dabs a little onto her palette, then opens the Yellow Ochre, mixes the two until she recreates the exact warm yellow she can see just behind her eyelids.

 _Get back in the saddle, Duan,_ she thinks with a grin. _That’s all you have to do._

 

Lardo comes home late, when all the light has faded from the park. She carries her painting like she would a precious baby cousin. Tenderly, firmly, with the urge to protect. She stares down at it as she rides the elevator up to the apartment. The brushwork’s sloppy and the shading is kind of inconsistent, two different light sources and kind of wonky shadows, but it just feels good, so good, to have made something.

After checking her hands for stray paint, she gingerly knocks on the door, having forgotten her keys in her huff earlier. She hopes Jack is still home. She hopes Jack still wants her to live with him after her hissy fit.

Jack opens the door and his mouth splits into a wide grin.

“I have a surprise for you,” he says.

Lardo steps through the threshold. “ _I_ have a surprise for _you_ ,” she says, and then she sees it: her lantern, hanging from the kitchen ceiling, firmly attached with what look like actual hardware store fixtures. Her jaw drops.

“I was a dick to you,” Jack says. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” she says. “I was a dick to you.”

“You were trying to help.”

“I was being nosy,” Lardo admits. “And dramatic.”

“ _I_ was being dramatic,” Jack insists. “You were trying to be a good friend.”

“No I wasn’t!” Lardo argues, starting to feel her cheeks heat up, and, realizing it, she bursts into  laughter. “Why are we fighting about this?”

“I don’t know,” Jack chuckles. “What was your surprise?”

Lardo reveals the painting: her lantern, ochre yellow, blowing in the wind against the backdrop of a Vietnam blue sky-and-ocean scene. “I thought it could be a compromise,” she laughs. “I didn’t know you were going to bring out the big guns,” she says, gesturing to the lantern that appears to be _drilled_ into the ceiling. That’s probably totally against their rental agreement. Still, the gesture is sweet in a very Jack way that he rarely lets anyone see.

“Lards,” Jack whispers. “That’s so good.”

“It’s not,” she says, embarrassed. “The shadows are--”

“It’s so, so good,” Jack says, making the kind of intense eye contact he usually reserved for the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team. “Don’t put yourself down. This is so good.”

“I--” Lardo starts to protest, and then she just...stops. It is good. It’s really, really good. When did she become someone who called something she’d worked hard on bad. “Thank you. It’s not dry, but...I want you to have it. If you want it. It’s good luck,” she says, grinning kind of lopsided.

“Thanks,” says Jack, looking truly grateful. “I need some.”

“Everyone does,” Lardo says. “What should we do for dinner?”

“Takeout?” Jack asks. He feels something loosen in his chest that’s probably been tight since he moved to Providence.

“Is that on the meal plan?” Lardo asks him with a smirk.

“Nah,” says Jack. “Just for tonight, fuck the meal plan.”

“My kind of night,” Lardo says. “Indian food?”

“Sure,” says Jack and opens his phone to get the number.

There’s a Google alert on his phone.

 _Falconers center Matthew Birkin traded to Los Angeles Aces for veteran Aaron Douglas,_ Jack reads.

Well, shit.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jack,” Marty says, sounding confused again. “Jack, you know I’ve never told anyone, right? Gabby and I--your secret’s totally safe with us. You can be yourself in our house.”  
> Jack sighs. “I know,” he says. “And I really, really do appreciate it. I’m just not ready for people to know. And especially since Douglas has…”  
> Marty’s face clouds over. “A reputation,” he mutters, shaking his head a little. “Believe me, I’ve heard it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaahhh thank you for all of the love and support after that last update!! thanks for riding out this story with me; i've finally gotten to a point in my life where i can anticipate a more predictable update schedule.
> 
> (tw:// panic attack)

Lardo thought summer in Providence was idyllic, but the fall is even more beautiful, leaves beginning to turn bright and beautiful in the early part of September and a bit of a chill in the air. She loves Providence. She loves Jack’s neighborhood. She loves the East Coast. Fall always kind of makes her in love with life, but after the shitstorm year she’d had, this feels like relief.

She loves the coffee shop down the street so much that she gets a job there as a food runner. In part, it’s because she needs money, but it’s also that the walls double as a gallery and Lardo just  _ sees _ her paintings on them, being shown to the rich people of Providence who will laud her with praise and exposure and  _ money _ . 

Her job is simple, but her boss, Nikki, is a total hardass. When Lardo asks, after a perfectly respectful number of weeks, if her art could be featured on the walls, Nikki gives a sharp laugh.

“Some of these folks have been featured in  _ Gallery Z, _ Larissa,” she says, like Lardo should have  _ heard of _ “Gallery Z,” but Lardo resolves to just keep her head down and do her job, to get into good graces the organic way. She’s waited tables since she was nine at her parents’ restaurant in Hartford, and the coffee shop gig is even easier, just bringing cappuccinos to rich white moms who are trying to buy time gossiping with their friends while their kids bang on stuff with silverware. It’s a good job, the tips are fantastic, and Lardo ends every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday with an ache in her feet and a feeling of satisfaction.

Her art is fucking burgeoning, too. The lantern painting had been so, so necessary. She’s been going back to Davis Park, trying to do more with the feeling of movement she’d captured in that first painting, now with humans and animals, something that had just been beyond her last year, in the depths of her depression. She paints an old man throwing a ball for his puppy, a lively Golden Retriever, and then a little boy she’s seen every day for a week running around in a Sleeping Beauty Halloween costume that looks like it’s been on him since last October. 

She asks his mom if she can paint him, because it seems like the right thing to do, she doesn’t want to be accused of being creepy later.

His mom is kind of young, and she looks wary at first. “Why? What about her?”

_ Her. _ Shit. Lardo feels like a total idiot.

“The princess costume,” she says, flushing. “It just tells such a story.”

“She likes it,” the woman says defensively. “She’s continually asked to be identified as a girl. And we’re not going to force her to take it off, and we don’t care if she looks  _ different _ \--”

“No, I think it’s great!” Lardo interrupts. “Really. F--screw the gender binary. Amen.”

“Sorry,” the woman says. “My born-again sister-in-law is always riding my ass about it. Says we’re going to Hell, I mean--”

“Gross,” Lardo says, and the woman gives a grumpy nod of assent. “I’m Larissa, by the way. You can call me Lardo, though.”

“Maya,” the woman says, holding out a hand. Lardo gestures to her paint-covered fingers apologetically, and Maya gives a laugh. “You can, if you want. Paint her. She goes by Noelle.”

“Good name,” Lardo says, starting to prime her canvas. She has a sketch of the painting, the way she’s planned it out, and she shows it to Maya.

Maya hoots. “If that isn’t the most Noelle thing I’ve ever seen.”

The painting takes two hours, with Lardo and Maya chatting idly, about Noelle and what brought Lardo to Providence, and then Lardo explains some of the rules of hockey to Maya, because she doesn’t know what a center is, or that Providence had a hockey team. When Lardo’s done with the detailing of the piece, she takes a break while Maya gives Noelle a juice box and offers one to Lardo. They lounge about in the fluffy grass and Noelle makes a game of bringing Lardo different sticks and pinecones, each of which she gives a different funny voice. She laughs every time, bright and loud, and she smiles back, bigger than she has in months. 

Maya finally checks her phone at 5:30, and swears.

“We’re late, Noelle!” she tells him. “The sitter’s going to be here any minute, and Mommy’s not going to have time to change before her date.”

“Hey,” she says, turning to Lardo. “You’re good with her. Do you babysit?”

“In high school, yeah,” says Lardo, surprised. “And I have CPR training, from lifeguarding.”

“Good, because my sitter right now is an incompetent piece of work,” Maya says, packing Noah’s ball into her tote bag. She takes an old coupon for free wings at Snookers Sports Bar and writes something on the back. “Here’s my number. Call me.”

“Will do,” Lardo says with a grin. 

  
  


The Falconers’ chemistry is fucked for many reasons, has been since before Jack joined the team. For one thing, Marty is like ten years older than the rest of them, thirty-five, which isn’t ancient, but...seems that way, sometimes. He’s established, a wife and the twins. Jack knows that it’s hard for the rookies and young guys (himself included) to ask for help when they need something, because, well, Marty’s actual kids need him and it seems frivolous to be like “I’m homesick” or “I’m in a points drought” or “I’m clinically depressed” to a guy with two babies at home. 

The A’s, Hodgy and Mack, aren’t much better. They’re younger than Jack, which is fucking weird, okay, it’s not like they know anything about life. And Hodgy needs to make everything a joke and Mack doesn’t talk, he just stares at you, all fish-eyed, until Hodgy takes over. So the Falcs have a bunch of millionaire baby hockey players, running around with too much money and not enough life experience, with no one to really rein them in. 

And losses are just...devastating, more so than any locker room Jack’s ever been in. Marty gets quiet, disappointed, and doesn’t ever say anything to them, like they’ve all failed him. And Hodgy will try to lighten the mood but they’re all already hanging their heads and Mack usually just covers Hodgy’s mouth at that point. 

Or maybe that’s just the way Jack sees everything, these days, as devastating and fearsome and potentially soul-crushing. All he knows is that every loss adds up twice as much to the wins. He’s on a downward spiral most of the time. 

Jack can’t see Douglas improving anything. He  _ can _ see him destroying what little progress the team has made, and the feeling of doom only intensifies when he meets him.

 

Marty invites him and Mack and Hodgy along to meet Douglas for dinner the night he gets in. Jack isn’t really sure why he’s been invited, but Lardo insists he go, so he puts on his best plaid button-down like he’s marching into battle. 

He’d asked his dad about Douglas the afternoon of the trade over Facetime, and his dad’s face had crinkled with concern.

“Jack...and, I mean, things have changed, guys are better, whatever. But he wasn’t very...tolerant of people like you, and I remember that even from the days before tolerance was an expectation. You get what I’m saying?”

Bad Bob doesn’t like to use the word _ gay  _ to describe Jack, even though that’s the word Jack would use to describe Jack, which is a story for a different therapy session, whatever. If he thinks Douglas was homophobic, though… Jack’s stomach jerks. He’s only just come out to Marty. He’s only  _ just _ felt like he could kind of do this, be himself, in the NHL. And now, here’s Douglas, fucking forcing him back into the closet he was only a timid half-step out of.

 

The steakhouse Marty chooses is classic Providence, all leather seats and a huge tin bowl of peppermints at the hostess’s podium where they wait while she finds them a secluded table.

Jack makes eye contact with Marty and jerks his head, signaling to him that they need to talk before Douglas gets here. 

Marty steps to an empty corner of the high-ceilinged room. Hodgy makes a move to follow him, but Mack tugs at his sleeve with a silent shake of his head.

(Bless Mack.)

“So, uh,” Jack starts out. “I don’t want this to be weird, and I don’t want to burden you with keeping a secret, but, uh, can we pretend I never told you, uh, what I told you?”

Marty gives him a blank look.

“About, um. The. The boyfriend?”

Marty’s face brightens with understanding, then folds into concern.

“Zimms,” he says. “You understand I’m not gonna let some attitude problem forty-year-old fuck with you. You know that’s not going to happen, right?”

 

(It’s true. Marty’s shut down every homophobic chirp Jack’s heard from the team, making guys pay with a fifty in practice and a hundred during games. He made Mack and Hodgy crack down on the guys, too, especially the rookies, though he didn’t tell them about Jack. At first there’d been kind of a gay witch hunt on the team, all the really young guys trying to figure out why there was such an emphasis all of a sudden, but Hodgy had overheard Artullo talking about it and smacked him upside the head, effectively shutting down the search.

“Because it’s the twenty-first goddamn century, Arty!” Hodgy had said, and everyone had gotten quiet. “Because it’s not cool to be an intolerant fuckheaded goon anymore!”)

 

Jack shakes his head. 

“You guys have been great about it,” he says. “Believe me, I really appreciate it, but I’m just not, uh, I’m just not in a place where I can handle anyone finding out.”

“Jack,” Marty says, sounding confused again. “Jack, you know I’ve never told anyone, right? Gabby and I--your secret’s totally safe with us. You can be yourself in our house.”

Jack sighs. “I know,” he says. “And I really,  _ really  _ do appreciate it. I’m just not ready for people to know. And especially since Douglas has…”\

Marty’s face clouds over. “A reputation,” he mutters, shaking his head a little. “Believe me, I’ve heard it.”

 

Douglas is less awful than Jack had thought he’d be, at least. Maybe that’s just because he doesn’t know Jack’s gay, but whatever. He looks really worn, all offseason muscle like the rest of them, but in a tired, thinning way. His hairline is receding and the hair on top of his head is getting patchy, which only makes him look older. It kind of looks like he’s had a hard life; Marty’s only three years younger than him, but Douglas looks like he has at least a decade on him. 

Hodgy carries the conversation (but when doesn’t he) for most of the meal, asking Douglas about the Aces and his Cup wins and the Habs, where Douglas had been before his first trade. Douglas answers monosyllabically, all “I guess”es and “sure”s. It’s a weird vibe, since that’s how Mack is most of the time, too, and probably Jack, if he’s honest with himself. 

“So,” says Marty, after they’ve gotten their entrees and are settled in a little. “I don’t want to assume anything, man, because I think everyone deserves a fresh start after a trade. But I just gotta let you know...we have a clean practice policy. And a clean game policy. Non-negotiable.”

Douglas looks up from his pork chop, eyes darting between Mack, Marty, and Hodgy, all of whom have adopted threatening older-brother stances, arms folded, faces forcibly blank. Mack and Hodgy don’t even know about him, but Jack feels a surge of gratitude for them. More so, he feels fucking safe right now. 

“Clean game policy?” Douglas repeats. 

“We don’t tolerate any sort of anti-gay slurs,” Hodgy says, all of the usual joking bravado gone from his voice. 

Douglas flinches a little, and the vicious part of Jack’s psyche likes it, wants him taken down a notch. 

“Understood,” he says, forced lightness in his voice, and silence falls over the table until Hodgy can’t stay quiet anymore and starts yammering about the shock of Subban losing the Hart. 

It’s only then that Jack feels the knot in his stomach that’s been there since Birkie’s trade loosen, just a little. He takes a massive bite of his loaded baked potato. 

Marty gives him the slightest of nods, and Jack smiles weakly back. 

Maybe it’ll be fine.

 

Lardo pads into the kitchen, stopping warily when she sees Jack sitting on the floor with his back against the cupboard where she keeps her tea. 

“Tough night?” she asks, brow knitting in concern.

His breathing is shallow, she notices, feeling her worry spike. He nods, dropping his head to rest on his knees. “ _ Fucked up _ night, seriously.”

“Are you…” Lardo hasn’t really done this with Jack. She’s seen him  _ start  _ to panic, but she’s always handed him off to Shitty or Bits. Asking if he’s okay is, like. Dumb, but she doesn’t know what to do.

His hands are starting to shake, and she slides down to the floor to cover them with her smaller hands. 

“Jack?” she says, feeling incredibly stupid. “Hey. Hey, Jack, okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

He wrestles his hands away to dig them into his hair, gripping it like he’s trying to rip it out.

“No,” Lardo says. “No, don’t hurt yourself. Okay, hey, look at me. Look at me, okay?”

Jack jerks his head towards her, but his eyes are wild, red and wet, like he’s begging her to make it better.

“Can you breathe with me?” Lardo asks. “Please? Just try? Okay, in…”

His inhale is ragged, like it’s being ripped from his throat, but he’s breathing, and Lardo counts that as a win.

“And out,” she says. “There you go.”

It takes him two minutes or so to get his breath under control, and then he remembers what made him anxious and has to start the whole thing over again. Finally, though, his muscles start to relax, and he sinks into Lardo’s shoulder.

A lump is forming in his throat, and he must force himself to clear it, looking away. She’s already seen how bad it is, though, and she pulls him tight to her, squeezing protectively. He tenses, then relaxes into it, as though letting some of the stress bleed out of him. 

“M’okay,” he whispers after a minute.

“You’re not,” Lardo says. “And that’s okay. Okay?”

They stay like that for another minute, and Jack had forgotten how nice human contact felt. Bad Bob is a hugger but he slaps you on the back, and so Jack probably hasn’t had a proper hug since graduation in May, after seeing Shits for the first time in three months.

Lardo breaks the hug, staring up at him in concern.

“Is this a crisis?” she asks him. “Seriously. Do you have a protocol for times like these?”

“Emergency meds in the bathroom cabinet,” he says. “Hydroxyzine.”

“How many?” Lardo asks him.

“Uh, two.” 

She fetches the meds and a glass of cold water, makes him drink the whole thing in little sips.

“Thanks,” he whispers, over and over again, ashamed of his own need.

“No problem,” she says for every thank you and sounds sincere, concerned, every time. Once the meds have started to kick in and his eyelids are getting heavier, she gestures for him to lie down, head on her lap.

They’re still.

“I think…” Jack trails off. Swallows. Tries to breathe. “I think it might be time to call Shitty.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...hnnngh... y'all.... this took...so long... I am...so sorry....  
>  but tbh this is a chapter made of sunshine, rainbows, expressed feelings, and warm cocoa, so. take it or leave it, I guess. I tried my very best. 
> 
> (also not to be desperate, but this bihh is in *desperate* need of a beta reader. would gladly return the favor. email speedboatstories@gmail.com.)
> 
> slight slight tw: thoughts of self-harm, very minor, details in notes at the bottom

The next morning, Lardo wakes early, the night before coming back to her in one roar. Jack’s panic attack, the homophobic douche joining the Falconers. _Shitty_ , she thinks, with a burst of feeling. It’s fear, and anger, but it’s also longing. She wishes they could have parted amicably. That this wasn’t going to be the most awkward day of her whole life.  

She throws on a black sundress, one of the last times she’ll probably wear it before it gets cold. She scrubs at her face in the mirror, at the flakes of mascara that are left from last night. She didn’t get a chance to wash her face; she had been up until 2, forming a plan for Shitty’s arrival and keeping Jack company.

Jack is passed out on the couch when she pads out to the kitchen and begins making her tea. She looks at him lying there, clutching the blanket she’d draped over him when she’d gone to bed. Even sleeping, he doesn’t look at peace. His forehead is scrunched, his eyebrows knit together, shoulders tense. The dark circles under his eyes look like bruises in the pale morning light.

She wonders if Douglas was the only thing that offset the panic attack. Obviously, he was the ultimate trigger, but it had seemed like that panic had been building for a while. Like Jack had been holding something in until it couldn’t stay in anymore and had to exit him, kicking and screaming and tearing at his lungs. Was it Bitty? The Falconers’ shitty season last year and the blame placed on Jack, who was supposed to be their savior but couldn’t score anything?

And maybe it wasn’t anything, was what Lardo had learned around midnight, when Jack had gone to sleep and she’d started googling panic attacks. Sometimes they were just shitty, unstable brain chemistry. All the chemicals mixing until Jack exploded like a baking soda volcano. Lardo has been fully aware of how GAD works for around six hours. She can’t imagine what _having it_ for six-plus years would be like.

Not for the first time in the past few hours, Lardo feels relieved to have reinforcement coming in. Jack is--Jack isn’t well. Jack is sick with _something_.

Shitty will be here at ten this morning on the train, just after he gives an excuse for his dad as to why he’s missing a day of his internship. There’s a thrill in her stomach at seeing him, even if he’s kind of mad at her still. She’d spent the night texting with him, all logistics, and imagining what he was thinking on the other end. Was he pleased they were in contact? Did he miss her? Was he irritated that she was even involved in this?

Lardo fills the kettle as quietly as she can, seeing as the open floor plan means any commotion in the kitchen would wake Jack. She grabs an extra mug from the cupboard and starts in on preparing the coffee, too, for when he does wake up.

When the kettle starts to whistle, she pours the water into her mug and selects a hibiscus berry blend. Energizing, fruity. The coffee maker also starts to make its presence known, perking, and, regrettably, Lardo sees Jack start to stir.  

He sits up after a second, blinking blearily at his surroundings, then at her, and then looking down at the ground. He refuses to make eye contact with her, even as she brings him his cup of coffee, strong with just the right amount of cream and a splash of agave.

“Sorry,” he says after he takes a sip. Lardo perches on the arm of the sofa with her hands wrapped around her mug of tea. “About last night.”

“Don’t apologize,” she tells him, bending down until he’s forced to meet her eyes. “I’m serious. You needed help. I’m your friend. Friends help each other. Friends ask for help when they need it.”

“I just,” Jack says, and seems to run out of steam completely. He sets his coffee down on a coaster on the coffee table and lies back down. “I don’t like people having to deal with...that side of me.”

“Tough,” she says. “Because we’re here for you anyways. Even _that side_ of you.”

Jack gives a tired, wan smile and closes his eyes.

“Thanks, Lards,” he whispers, and she moves his legs so that she can sit down on the couch next to him and steal part of the blanket.

 

Around eight, Jack wakes up for the second time. Lardo is nowhere to be seen, and when he stands up to stretch, cartilage cracking in his neck and shoulders, he sees a note in her cramped handwriting on the kitchen counter.

 

_Ran to get groceries. Back by 8:30 to pick up Shits. Be ready by then, pls. -L_

 

Jack lets out an audible sigh, since there’s no one around to hear him being such a whiny baby about having to _get ready_ , God forbid. He sees his coffee on the counter, where Lardo must have taken it when he fell back to sleep. It’s cold, but he takes a few sips anyways, trying to force his brain to work a little faster. Okay. Jack has thirty--twenty-four, really--minutes to get ready.

He can do this.

He takes the cold coffee with him to the bathroom, despite everyone who’s ever lived with him insisting that’s the most disgusting thing he could do. He remembers Kent refusing to kiss him when they were rooming together before the draft, insisting that there were tiny microbes of E. coli lurking in his mouth from his morning coffee in the bathroom.

Okay. The first rule of today is not to think about the draft, Jack thinks as he registers the painful clench his heart does at the thought of it. No Kent, either. He’s in survival mode right now. He picks up his razor, then decides better of it. His hands are shaky right now and his stubble isn’t that bad. Better than nicking himself by accident.

_Or on purpose,_ whispers a secret part of his brain, and Jack shakes his head abruptly. The second rule of today is not to hurt himself. It’s a really simple rule. It’s something he can do. That’s a manageable goal for sure. It’s all about small rules. Small goals.

He decides he’ll just wash his face. He douses his face in cold water, trying to extinguish any lingering thoughts of self-harm, and he picks up the soap and lathers it in his hands. It feels good on his face. He rubs his hands over the sharp stubble, over his closed eyes and in his eyebrows. Then he rinses.

When he opens his eyes again, a slightly better-looking Jack stares back at him in the mirror. His skin is pink from scrubbing. His eyes are still bloodshot, still a little swollen from last night, but they look bluer than they’ve looked in a while. Next, he brushes his teeth, still inspecting his reflection. He looks so much older than he did, even a few months ago. He’s pale, even though it’s September, because he’s been doing all his workouts inside. There are deeper wrinkles in his forehead than he’s ever seen before. He looks...gray.

He spits.

He’s been sick for a while. And he’s decided, really decided, now, that he wants to get better.

 

Shitty emerges from the crowd at Providence Station and Lardo swears to God, hand on her heart, she feels him coming before she sees him. Her legs tense, her lungs seize, and then there he is, looking preppier and more adult than the last time she saw him. He has on an old Samwell sweatshirt and jeans and she’s never seen anything more beautiful.

His mustache is gone, is the most notable thing, and she gives it a quiet eulogy in her head.

“Zimmy!” he yells when he gets close, and Lardo registers the distinct look on Jack’s face when he sees Shitty.

It’s relief. Lardo lets her muscles, tense since she’d found Jack on the floor last night, relax as well. Shitty is here. All will be well.

Jack falls into a bone-crushing hug that looks painful, but when they break apart, he seems more alive than Lardo has seen him in a week. Shitty sees her, then, and there’s a painful moment where she goes in for a hug, and Shitty just gives her this...look.

Like he doesn’t think they’re friends anymore. Like he doesn’t know what to label her as, like he still thinks she’s the self-absorbed brat who came on to him in June.

And maybe something like regret, too, and Lardo feels her heart shrivel like a dying star.

 

When they’ve dropped Lardo off at the apartment, Jack lets Shitty drive him downtown at his insistence. They park the car in the Falconers’ office ramp, and then take an elevator ride down to the street, Jack’s stomach pooling with increasing dread the whole time.

Shitty must see it on his face, because he clamps a heavy, reassuring hand on Jack’s shoulder and squeezes.

“You want me to wait with you, Jay-Z?” he asks, serious. “I could be right outside the door the whole time, no problem. You just say the word.”

“No, I.” Jack blows a frustrated breath out of puffed cheeks. What the fuck is wrong with him? This isn’t scary, he shouldn’t need to be chaperoned. It’s a meeting with the team psychologist, not MK-Ultra. “I can do it alone. Do you mind just, um. Walking me into the offices? Just so I don’t…”

“Bolt,” Shitty finishes for him, with a wry smile. “Sure. And if you can’t do it…”

“I can do it,” Jack says determinedly. He refuses to let these fucking _illnesses_ hold him back from a better season this year. It’s going to be different this time.

“That’s my guy,” Shitty says. He throws an arm over Jack’s shoulder and lets Jack half-drag him to the building.

 

Jack flashes his security clearance badge at Ike, one of the doormen for the Falconers’ front offices, and, gesturing to Shitty, says, “He’s with me.”

Ike gives them both a friendly wave, and Jack walks through to the Falconers’ management offices.

The offices are sparse white walls with orange accents and blue doors, trim, and desks. Every team in the franchise’s relatively short history has a picture on the wall, Jack himself in the one from last season. This space gives Jack heart palpitations; the GM, Jerry Anderson, always seems to be lurking, looking for reasons to trade him. Jack isn’t ashamed, per se, of seeing the psychologist. But he’d really like to keep his job, and Anderson seems like the kind of guy who would trade someone for some bullshit like that.

He wonders, absently, if he’s protected from trades if his mental health comes under fire. He guesses, from his seasoned experience, that he’s not. Hockey and neuroatypicality have never cohabitated well.

Shitty is looking around, almost reverently, at the Falconers memorabilia all over the walls. There are jerseys, 500th-goal pucks, sticks that have scored Stanley Cup-winning goals. If Jack hadn’t been raised with this sort of shit literally in his blood, he supposes he would be impressed, too. To him, this memorabilia just serves as a reminder of all their young team hasn’t managed to accomplish. A reminder of franchise history they aren’t living up to.

Past the GM’s block of offices are the trainers, nutritionists, and...the psychologist. Jack recognizes her door immediately. He’s entertained this fantasy for months where he runs into her office and says, “I feel like I’m dying, please help me,” and she fixes him in a few short hours and he’s back to a hundred percent. The way the trainers do when there’s a kink in your back or  a bruise that needs icing.

(Jack has long suspected that the extent to which his mental health is fucked-up is more on the “concussion/ACL tear/broken femur” level. That is to say, requiring a long and exhaustive recovery period.)

There’s a sign on the psychologist’s doorknob that says, “occupied with patient, check back at 1:45.”

Jack checks his watch. 1:38.

There are two chairs outside her door. Jack kind of doesn’t want to wait outside, in case Anderson sees him, but Shitty plops down in one chair and motions for Jack to do the same.

“I’ll just stay here,” Shitty says. “For the hour, I think.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Jack sighs. He lets his head, heavy, drop onto Shitty’s shoulder. Shitty covers it with his own and grabs Jack’s hand, tussling with his fingers.

Logically, Dr. Mendelssohn has been with the team for four seasons. She must be used sby some of the guys, if she’s still on payroll three years later, Jack reassures himself, hands shaking slightly. He can’t be the only one who’s felt this way.

Minutes later, the door creaks open, and Douglas, of all people, ambles out. He gives Jack a nod of acknowledgment and, to Dr. Mendelssohn, says, “Thanks, Amanda.”

How reassuring. Even homophobes need help, sometimes.

 

Jack has had two therapists in his lifetime. The first he’d gotten around the age of ten, when he’d had a few post-game anxiety attacks in a row and, embarrassingly, had begun to wet the bed again. His mom was concerned and took him to see a kid-therapist, Frank, who had a bunch of wooden toys and always sat on the floor with him, starting with easy questions like “how was your day?” and gradually upping the ante to real _hard-hitters_ like “does it seem like your father is disappointed in you?”

Even though Jack had tried every way possible to get out of the appointments, at least for the first few months, talking to Frank had actually helped. The panic attacks and bedwetting stopped, but, when Jack began to ramp up training in preparation for the Q’s draft, their appointments had fallen to the wayside.

(What Jack hadn’t mentioned to his mom when he’d asked to stop therapy was the way that, after the reverent way Jack had described meeting Sidney Crosby, Frank had cottoned on to Jack maybe not being straight, and had begun to ask increasingly leading questions in an effort to get Jack to open up. Feeling caught and fearing the one thing he desperately wanted to stay private, secret, maybe forever, he’d begged his mom to let him join some hockey clinic that practiced on Wednesday afternoons, thus interfering with his four o’clock Wednesday therapy session.)

The second therapist Jack has had began seeing him during his weeklong juvenile involuntary hold after his overdose. In a program made up of other suicidal teens, a demographic Jack was convinced for years he didn’t fit into, seeing Heather was his only respite from the otherwise dreary surroundings. When he’d been discharged, she’d agreed to keep seeing him as an outpatient while he took an involuntary gap year to figure out what he was going to do now that hockey was, at least for the time being, over.

Heather had been the first person he’d _really_ come out to. It had been Heather he told when he secretly filled out an application to Samwell and had gotten in, based _solely on his academics_. It had been Heather who had suggested that, when the coaches had asked him if he wanted to play hockey, that maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. That maybe Jack could find his love of hockey all over again.

And he had.

And then it was gone again.

 

“Hey, Dr. M,” Jack says, biting his lip as he stands in the doorway. She beckons him in.

“What can I do for you today, Jack?” Dr. Mendelssohn asks when she closes the door. She’s only a few years older than him, maybe in her early thirties, blonde and pretty. He feels desperately awkward. “And please, Amanda is fine.”

“I, uh.” He takes a deep breath. “I think I’m, um. Depressed.” He clears his throat. “And I’m looking for uh. A therapist?” His voice sounds weird. He resists the urge to shout “never mind!” and run out of the room, down the hall, and maybe to Canada? Or Tibet?

“Oh,” says Amanda, voice neutral. “Okay. Well, I’m just going to give you the basic DSM screening test, then, to make sure it’s depression we’re dealing with and not something else.”

“Okay,” Jack says. He scratches his neck.

“Why don’t you sit down,” she suggests, gesturing to a sleek white recliner. “I’m just going to print some forms for us to go through.” She clicks a few buttons on her computer and the printer whirrs to life.

“Would you like some tea before we begin?” she asks, taking a seat across from him and shuffling the packet of fresh printed papers. Jack shakes his head.

“Alright, then,” Amanda says. “Let’s begin. Are you experiencing frequent worry or tension?”

“Yes.”

“How often? Seldom, often, or always?”

“Often,” Jack says, wishing there was an option between often or always. He isn’t _always_ experiencing worry, because sometimes he’s asleep, or on Twitter, or making a sandwich, but often feels too infrequent. Constantly. That’s what he’d say

“Fear of many things?”

“No.”

“Discomfort in social situations?”

Jack flushes. “Yes. Often.”

“Feelings of guilt?”

“Often.”

“Phobias?”

“No.”

“Panic attacks?”

“Yes. Often.”

“How often?”

“Maybe two a week.”

“Alright.”

The survey continues through the anxiety section. Jack is used to answering often for those questions, this certainly isn’t his first rodeo. He breezes past the “eating disorder” section with only one “often”: worrying about food. He isn’t hearing voices or having intrusive thoughts, he isn’t and hasn’t been manic.

Then, Amanda starts the section he’s been dreading.

“Are you experiencing decreased interest in activities that once brought you joy?”

“Yes,” he says, staring at his hands. Hockey. History. Band of Brothers.

“Social isolation?”

“Less so right now, but a lot in the past year,” he answers.

“Changes in sleep?”

“Yes. I get less now even though I’m in bed longer than I’ve ever been.”

“Low self-esteem?”

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Feelings of intense guilt?”

“Yes.”

“Thoughts of hurting yourself?” she asks, and Jack feels his stomach drop. His silence makes Dr. Mendelssohn look up from her papers. “Yes?” she answers for him. “How often?”

“Maybe once a week,” he says, his voice low. His eyes low.

“Self-harm of any kind?” she asks. “Cutting? Bruising? Picking fights?”

“No,” he answers quickly.

She looks at him for a few seconds, maybe like she doesn’t quite believe him, before she moves on.

“Daily tasks requiring more effort?”

“Yes.”

 

When they’ve finished the survey, Amanda straightens, stacking the papers neatly and stapling them like they don’t contain Jack’s deepest secrets. When she’s organized her desk, she leans forward and looks Jack in the eye.

“So it looks like you’ve been struggling with depression and anxiety for a while,” she says. “Like you guessed. Now, for the combination of depression and anxiety, most psychologists agree that dialectical behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy are the most helpful forms of therapy. That’s going to be a talk-therapy format that’s focused on the reasons behind you feeling the way that you’re feeling and ways to problem-solve depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, I’m not licensed in CBT or DBT, so I can’t treat you here. But I do know a lot of amazing CBT clinicians in the Providence area. I’m going to start off by referring you to a friend of a friend in Smith Hill, which isn’t too far from where you’re living. He does great work, but if he doesn’t work out, come see me again and we’ll figure something out.”

Jack gives an aborted nod.

“I’m going to give Dr. Jeffrey Baranski your contact information, then,” Amanda says smoothly, and stands up. Jack mirrors her, slightly dazed. “He should be in touch in a few days, but if he’s not, come back. I have plenty of great colleagues.”

“Thanks,” Jack says, as she starts to open the door.

“Never a problem,” Amanda says. She stops him before she opens the door with a hand on his wrist. “Believe me, Jack, you’re far from the first person to be experiencing this. It was smart of you to come in when you did. These illnesses tend to escalate during the season. Now, you’ll be able to get a handle on it. It’s never smart to be a hero about mental health.”

Jack gives an aborted wave to her as he leaves her office. Shitty is still sitting faithfully in the chair outside, and he gives Jack a huge grin when he sees him.

“Well, how’d it go?” he asks, standing up to give him a hug. Jack leans into it.

“Got a referral to a therapist,” Jack says nervously.

“That’s great, bro!” Shitty says.

“Thank you,” Jack whispers in his ear. The hug has gone on for too long, but he can’t bring himself to break it. “For just, like. Being here.”

Shitty pulls back and looks Jack directly in the eye.

“I’m always here,” he says. “I’m serious, Jack, I’m always a train ride away. Or a phone call if I can’t physically be here.”

“I know,” Jack says. He bites his lip. “Just...take the thanks. Please?”

“‘Course,” Shitty says. “I’m the best, you’ll never have another friend like me, blah, blah, blah. Feel free to continue.”

Jack lets out a laugh, probably the first one he’s had in four days, and lets Shitty lead him past Lundy’s office, past Ike the friendly doorman, and out into the streets of downtown Providence, where it’s just starting to rain.

And just for a few seconds, Jack feels with distinct clarity that everything is going to be okay.

 

Lardo hears the key turn in the lock and turns in time to see a wind-rumpled, wet Jack and Shitty enter through the door.

“We got caught in the rain,” Jack explains. He pulls a loaf of the good Farmers’ Market sourdough bread they like out from under his sweatshirt.

“Grilled cheese?” Lardo says hopefully. “I’ll go get some tomato soup from work.”

“Don’t bother,” Jack says. “It’s pouring out there.”

“No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes,” Lardo singsongs, already standing up to grab her raincoat from the hook.

“Suit yourself,” Jack shrugs. “You mind if I take a nap? I’ll help with sandwiches when I get back, but I’m wiped.”

“‘Course,” Lardo says. He plops down on the couch and immediately lies down, closing his eyes. She goes to the kitchen to grab the growler-sized thermos she’d gotten from the co-op a few weeks ago. “Rest up.”

Lardo pulls on her raincoat, and remembers Shitty is here, still standing on the welcome mat.

“Would you mind if I came with?” he asks her, and Lardo tries desperately to suppress the romantic fantasies that spring into her head. She shakes her head to clear it, and he must take that as _no, I don’t mind_ , because he grabs Jack’s raincoat from the hook and pulls it on.

“You mind if I use your rain jacket, Jay-Z?” he asks, and they both peer over the couch to see that Jack is already dozing. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Shitty says. “You want me to carry that?”

He’s gesturing at her thermos. She nods, shyly handing it to him, and grabs her key from the hook. Jack’s raincoat is massive on him. He looks like a little boy playing dress-up.

As they make their way out of the apartment and down the hallway to the elevator, Lardo can tell that Shitty wants to say something. He keeps opening his mouth and taking a breath, then closing it again, losing his nerve. All through the elevator ride, he does it until they’re out the front door and on the street, when he turns to her and says, “Look, I’ve been thinking.”

They’re still under the building’s awning, but rain is pouring around them.

Lardo stops and stares at him. Shitty looks so young, without his mustache and sideburns. He looks like any other guy you’d see at Target or in an REI catalog. He’s still good-looking, Lardo wants to climb him like a tree, but he seems younger than he did when they were in college. Maybe it’s the oversized raincoat.

Maybe it’s because she knows now that he doesn’t have all the answers.

“What have you been thinking about?” she asks him, motioning for him to take a right to get to the cafe. They start walking down the street, rain falling on their covered heads, and Shitty takes another breath.

“About us,” he says softly. She can barely hear him when he says it. “About how we’ve been treating each other.”

“Oh,” Lardo says. _Continue_ , she wills him.

“I realized that maybe we weren’t communicating as well as _I_ thought we were before the breakup,” he says, eyes trained ahead. “That maybe I kind of...railroaded you into a relationship.”

“One...could say that,” Lardo whispers.

“And I realized that maybe I wasn’t as, um. Evolved? As I thought I was. When you broke up with me.”

“Evolved?”

“To put it clinically, I behaved like a whiny little bitch,” Shitty says, and it startles a giggle out of her. “Like Pete Campbell on _Mad Men_. Like an entitled prep school boy who hides behind a ruse of feminism but succumbs to toxic masculinity when he gets hurt. Hypothetically, I mean.”

They turn onto another street.

“Look, Lardo,” Shitty says. “When you ghosted me...that was really fucked up. And you’ve apologized for it enough, but that’s just my truth. That really, really hurt me.”

His voice sounds scraped-out, and Lardo bites her lip as tears start to rush to her eyes.

“But I acted like a tool after the fact,” he says. “I never should have made it so our friends had to take sides.”

Lardo lets out a tiny sob she can’t hold back and Shitty turns to her, looking surprised. She’s never been a crier. Not until she left him.

“I’m s-so sorry,” she says. Her voice quavers. “For everything. For hurting you. For the kegster, _God,_ for the kegster.”

“No,” Shitty says. He shakes his head. “Seriously, I was _so_ mean to you at the kegster, Jack had my ass and I deserved it.”

“I deserved it,” Lardo says, tears starting to drip down her face. “I mean, I came in there and just assumed you’d want me b--”

“No, I treated you like you were worthless to me when that couldn’t be further from the--”

“--and I just left you without even a note or a text, when I knew you’d been abandoned befo--”

“--dragged you into our relationship, without ever asking when I can’t stop preaching communication to other peop--”

“Let’s just stop!” Lardo yells. Shitty stops walking. They’re gasping for air, staring at each other. Tears are coursing down both of their faces. Shitty’s cheeks are bright red and she’s sure hers are, too. “Let’s just stop,” she repeats, quieter. “Because I miss you so goddamn much, Shitty. As a friend. I miss your encouragement and your jokes and your wisdom. I just miss you. And I don’t care whose fault it is or who hurt who worse anymore.”

She dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket.

“And I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you. I really am. I wish I could undo it, but. I can’t. So let’s just start over.”

“I’m sorry, too,” says Shitty. “And God, I missed you too, Lards. You have no idea. Every day I missed you.”

“I forgive you,” Lardo says. “For everything. As far as I’m concerned, clean slate.”

“I forgive you, too,” Shitty says. He sniffs loudly. “Clean slate.”

“Friends?” she asks.

“Friends,” he answers, and goes in for a hug. She has to stand on her tiptoes and his arms envelope her. He smells like soap and she breathes him in. She can’t help wanting to kiss him. It’s wrong, she shouldn’t, he has Samantha now, but she does.

“Okay,” he says when they break apart. “No more crying. Catch me up on everything.”

“You, too,” she says, pointing accusitorily.

“I’ll catch you up, too,” he agrees, smiling that sunshiney, Shitty smile that makes her guts go liquid. “You on the way there, me on the way back.”

“Okay,” she starts, grabbing his arm and starting to walk again. The rain has softened to gentle patter. “So this cafe where I work, right? We have all this modern surrealist stuff on the walls so I ask if I can sell a few of my paintings because that’s my shit, right, and my boss is like, ‘Larissa’--she always calls me Larissa, she’s _insufferable_ \--’some of these artists have been featured in _Gallery Z_ …’”

 

Jack wakes up to the smell of toasted cheese and bread and tomato basil bisque. More notably, he wakes up to the sound of Shitty and Lardo laughing together. He sits up, convinced he’s hallucinating.

They’re at the dining room table, each dunking half a grilled cheese into tomato soup, then biting in with a crunch in the bread that makes Jack’s mouth water. Shitty says something about Tub Juice and Lardo giggles.

They’re friends again? Jack woke up and one of his stressors is just...solved? He rises slowly to his feet with a groan.

“Oh, he’s up,” Shitty says. “Hey, Jack, I can make you a sandwich.”

Jack nods, bleary-eyed, and makes his way to the seat next to Lardo.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks him, leaning over to give him a hug from the side.

“Yeah,” he says, then realizes it’s actually true. “Better than I have in weeks.” He snags a bite of Shitty’s sandwich.

“Hey!” Shitty yelps. “Wait for yours.”

Jack sticks his tongue out, revealing the chewed-up bite he’s taken.

“Only children,” Shitty mutters, but he’s smiling. “So sad the way they haven’t been socialized properly.”

“Hey,” Jack whispers when Shitty goes into the kitchen to make him his sandwich. “Are you guys…?”

“We talked it out,” Lardo answers. She’s beaming. “We’re friends again.”

“Just friends?”

“Just friends,” she says. “And that’s better than it’s been for a long time.”

“One _croque monsieur_ , hot off ze grill!” Shitty announces in a terrible French accent, parading a plate back into the room. “And a cold beer for ze savior of ze Providence Falconers.” He singsongs the last part.

Jack bites into the grilled cheese, which _isn’t_ a croque monsieur, but _is_ better in every way. It’s heaven. He lets out a groan of delight.

Shitty and Lardo are smiling at each other, clearly pleased they’ve cheered him up. Jack looks back and forth between them and feels a smile work its way up from his chest.

_Just friends_ , his ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: a character considers nicking themselves on purpose with a razor, but does not follow through on these thoughts
> 
> as you can see, Jack ships it. he's one of us. he gets it.
> 
> you know what other ship I'm a big fan of? speedboat/grilled cheese. that's an otp right there.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> k y'all it's been wild but here we are

Lardo gets a text from Maya the morning that Shitty goes home, asking if she’s available to babysit Noelle, the little girl from the park. 

[](https://imgur.com/FLXjENs)

“You’re saving my A-S-S,” Maya says. “That’s the bathroom through there--there are snacks on top of the fridge, and some Coke in the pantry if you want it. Thanks again for doing this last minute.”

“No problem,” Lardo says.

“Last-minute work emergency,” Maya says. “They’re all twenty-four and can’t fathom having someone rely on them, so they’re all, please fix it, Maya. I know Saturdays aren’t good for you, but… like I don’t have a kid at home to take care of. Oh, to be that young and dumb again,” she sighs, and then seems to remember that Lardo is that young and that dumb. “No offense, girl.”

Lardo waves her off. “None taken.”

“Alright,” Maya says. “Mommy has to go now, but Larissa is going to stay here and have fun with you, okay, baby? And I’ll be back in just a few hours. Before you’re in bed.” She squats to give Noelle a hug. “You be good, now.”

“Yes, Mommy,” Noelle whispers. She’s more shy today than she was in the park. She’s clinging to Maya’s leg, but seems less rambunctious today, which bodes well for what Lardo has planned. 

“I thought maybe we could draw, if you wanted?” Lardo asks. “I brought over some of my art supplies to share.”

Maya strokes the back of Noelle’s head in a motherly gesture that reminds Lardo, with a sharp pang, of her own mother, as well as Ba Phan. “That sounds pretty fun, doesn’t it, honey?”

“What would we draw?” Noelle asks, extracting one arm from Maya’s knee to peer up at Lardo. Lardo pops a squat so that they’re at eye level.

“I was thinking we could draw ourselves,” Lardo says. 

“I’m not very good at drawing,” Noelle says seriously, like this might be a dealbreaker.

“Everyone can be good at drawing,” Lardo says. “If they have a little help sometimes from someone patient. And I have been told that I’m the patient-est.”  
Noelle considers for a moment. “Okay,” she says, and moves away from her mom. Maya gives the back of her head a guilty look, but she seems to relax a little, and grabs her keys.  
“Bye, baby girl,” she says.  
“Bye,” Noelle says, distracted by the prospect of having a drawing partner, and Lardo relaxes as well.  
When Maya has left the apartment, Lardo pulls a roll of the industrial-size construction paper she usually uses to sketch out of her backpack. She grabs the Ziploc of markers and colored pencils from her pack, too, and sets them on the kitchen table.   
“I think we should do self-portraits,” Lardo says. “Big ones. Can I trace you?”

Five minutes of tracing and one miniature lesson on the work of Frida Kahlo later (Noelle had asked what a self-portrait was, and Lardo couldn’t resist showing her the definitive master of them), they’re ready to begin. 

“Alright,” Lardo says. “Ready, set, go.”

Lardo starts with an anatomically correct heart on the left side of her body. She pulls up a model on her phone to guide her through the complicated arteries and veins surrounding the muscle. Once she’s done with the drawing, she writes in tiny script the people and things that reside there. Mom and Dad and Ba Phan and Adam folded into the vena cava. Samwell along the left ventricle. Jack, Bitty, Ransom, Holster and, yes, Shitty (demarked with just an S for Noelle’s sake) are just under the aorta. And “art” is written in massive block letters in the pulmonary artery because she never wants to forget how much she loves it again. 

These are the things that pump blood through Lardo’s veins. 

 

An hour later, Noelle announces she’s hungry, so they break for a snack of clementines and string cheese, and sit back to admire their handiwork. 

Noelle has made herself a princess, with a flowy pink dress and a crown of flowers. 

There are also marks on her arms, and Lardo asks what they are.

“They’re muscles,” Noelle says around a mouthful of clementine. “Because I’m strong and I’m a girl.”

Something about the way that Noelle says that, completely self-assured, just an innate knowing, sticks in Lardo’s mind. She mulls it over as she finishes her drawing, as she says goodbye to Maya when she gets back and walks home, as she makes dinner.

“Because I’m strong,” Noelle’s voice repeats to her, and, at nine at night, Lardo sits straight up on the couch and feels a thrill in her stomach.

This is what inspiration feels like. This is what the artist’s blood coursing through her veins used to feel like.

Lardo can’t believe she’d forgotten.

 

The preseason starts for Jack with little fanfare. Not much changes, at least for him, because he lives in Providence full-time. Instead of solitary workouts and the occasional drill with Marty or Mack, it’s an actual practice with, like, coaches and the guys. Still, Jack has been training hard all summer, and training camp feels easier, less overwhelming and exhausting, than it did last year. Jack feels, for once in his life, prepared, and not completely terrified. He still keeps himself up at night with what-ifs sometimes, but sleep comes easier than it has in ages.

His confidence, to be fair, is probably due at least in part to the twice-weekly appointments with Dr. Baranski, the therapist Amanda recommended. They’re hour-long sessions where Jack recalls the triumphs and trials of the past three days, including his bouts of anxiety. Then, they talk about the roots of his anxiety and ways that he can rewrite these cognitive patterns. 

It had seemed superbly useless at first, until Jack missed an open-net shot during a scrimmage in practice, heard the voice in his head calling him stupid, worthless, a terrible hockey player, and had said to himself in a voice that sounded a lot like Shitty, “cognitive distortion.”

The voice hadn’t gone away after that, but it had kind of shriveled, become less important. It wasn’t the truth, and Jack wasn’t letting it drown out everything else he heard anymore.

So, yeah. Maybe Dr. B. was onto something.

It’s not to say that everything is great and he’s cured. Jack still has mornings where he has to bribe himself out of bed with the promise that he can get back in as soon as he gets home from morning skate. He still feels like he’s on a rollercoaster every time he talks to one of his teammates, the voice interjecting, they hate you, they see right through you, you’re boring them, they don’t want you here.

But it’s getting easier, with the help of Dr. B. and Lardo and, from FaceTime, Shitty, to tell the anxiety bully in his head to shut up. To mind its own business and shut the hell up.

 

The only thing about Dr. B that Jack really can’t get behind is his insistence on a consistent time, and his unwillingness to adjust to Jack’s crazy schedule. He insists on Monday appointments at 2. He’s in high demand, which Jack understands, and he could probably get some sort of lenience for being late if he told the coaches it was for therapy. But that’s not something you tell coaches. Not here in the league, when it could get back to management, where they’re always itching to free up cap space. 

As a result, he’s boarding the plane to Las Vegas nineteen minutes behind schedule. When he finally boards, all the guys give him a slow, sarcastic clap, which should feel team-y. Except that it makes Jack’s head explode with wow, they all really hate you.

“Fuck, I’m sorry…” he starts to explain to Marty, but Marty waves him off. 

“Just find a place to sit,” he whispers, giving the coaches a sidelong glance. “You’re fine, they just sometimes like to healthy scratch someone to make an example in the preseason. Teach the rookies to be on time and all.”

A pit is forming in Jack’s stomach, and it only widens when he scans the seats and only finds two open ones. One is next to La Petit, the equipment manager, who’s at the very front with the coaches Jack is trying to avoid for fear of a lecture or, worse, a scratch.

The other option is next to Douglas, whom Jack would prefer never to talk to outside of practice again. But, as he eyes the coaches again, who are staring expectantly at him, he makes a decision and heads back to aisle seven, hoisting his carry-on into the overhead.

“Hey, uh, can I sit here?” Jack asks, and Douglas pulls out an earbud, surprised. 

“Oh, sure,” he says, and moves his backpack from where it had been, on the seat next to him. Jack sits down, heart racing. He’s not sure what he’s so afraid of; Douglas won’t be able to sniff out Jack’s secret just from sitting next to him. But Jack’s game plan had been to fly as far under Douglas’s radar as he could, and this was a direct violation of that policy.

“Were you the one making us late?” Douglas asks with a smirk.

“Yeah,” Jack says stiffly. Douglas isn’t the first bully he’s dealt with. As stupid as it is, Jack still thinks back to the advice Kent, who’d been a shrimp until he was seventeen and grew another four inches, had taught him in the Q, when some of the seniors had thrown Jack’s clothes in the shower: neutral face, indifferent posture, and a snappy retort if the situation escalated. Jack had repeated that as a mantra all through the Q, a talisman against the million cruel chirps on the other side of the faceoff circle, and the attacks from his own teammates in the locker room, where being Bad Bob’s son drew a target on his back.

“Relax, man,” says Douglas, noticing Jack’s iciness. “Happens to the best of us. Hell, Parse’s cat got out right before he was supposed to leave for a circus trip last fall, and after two hours waiting, we had to take off without him.”

That startles a snort out of Jack. 

“Parse,” Jack says, fond, and then freezes. He has to keep his guard up around Douglas. If not for his own sake, then Kent’s. He’s not the only one with a secret.

Douglas chuckles, though, apparently unable to interpret from that one word that Kent and Jack used to be a thing. 

“Never met someone who was so much a mess and a god at the same time,” he says. It sounds affectionate, and despite the million alarm bells going off in his head, Jack feels a pang of sympathy register for Douglas.

“Are you nervous?” he asks, even though it’s a terrible idea to pull a single brick out of the wall he’s erected around himself to keep Douglas out. It’s like Jenga: all his defenses could fall down with one wrong move, and it would out both him and Parse. “Facing your old team?”

Jack can’t...he can’t help it. He sees little flashes of himself in Douglas: the reputation that precedes him, the wide berth their teammates give them both. It’s a terrible idea to humanize Douglas, and yet…

“Yeah,” Douglas says. “Pretty nervous. Mostly jitters, but...it’s hard, playing against guys you know so well. Feels like a dream, at first.”  
Jack nods. He knows exactly what Douglas is talking about.

“You’ll get a handle on it,” he says, injecting some confidence into his voice. “It’s like riding a bike.”

Douglas gives a hollow laugh. “Backwards,” he says. “With no handlebars.”

When, one plane ride and two shuttles later, the Falconers arrive in Las Vegas, Jack has forgotten all about the other source of his concern. The game. 

 

After the anthem, the puck drops. It’s Douglas versus Kent, and the Aces get the puck. Jack quickly tears it away, though, and leads it down the ice, where Marty is waiting for it. Marty misses the goal and Kent nabs it back, passing to Vilnius. Vilnius skates down and scores right between Schmitty’s legs. There’s a brief celly and the game goes to commercial. Lardo groans. She doesn’t want Parse to win. She hates that guy. The second puck drop, Jack gets it right away. He plays keepaway with Vilnius, passes to Marty, who shoots the puck with laserlike focus into the goal. Lardo smiles. 

The next goal takes the entire second period to realize. It’s all back and forth, and Lardo looks up from her sketchbook just in time to see the puck go in. She realizes that it’s pushed the Falconers into a lead, and nearly drops her gouaches with the strength of her fist pump. Kent Parson is going down. 

There’s some more chasing, back and forth action that Lardo can’t bring herself to care about, but she watches the score anxiously, eyes darting between it and her sketchbook feverishly. She’s never been a sports person, even at Samwell when she managed, but this is different. This is about right versus wrong, Jack versus Kent, the absolute prick. 

Slowly, the time runs down to three minutes, two, and…zero. The Falconers have won their exhibition game. Lardo thinks, viciously, of Kent Parson’s weird, abusive fixation on being better than Jack. Not this time, she thinks, with a particularly vicious stroke of her charcoal. 

 

In the handshake line post-game, Jack nearly falls over when Kent meets his eyes, says an earnest, “good game,” and then asks him to dinner.  
“Your treat, winner,” he says, with just enough sarcasm to ease the worry in Jack’s chest. He’d wondered if Kent was going to tell him he had months left to live.  
Jack changes into his suit as quickly as he can and breezes through the few post-game interviews that are his responsibility. There are times he misses being in a leadership role, like he had been at Samwell, but he really can’t complain about how short his post-game obligations are these days. Within thirty minutes, he’s in a cab heading down the Strip.

And down the Strip, until the lights fade and he finds himself in Boulder City. 

He gets out when the cab driver stops, and has to double-check his phone to make sure he’s in the right place. For one stressful minute Jack contemplates the idea that Kent put out a hit on him, Nancy Kerrigan-style.

[](https://imgur.com/smm6Xq5)

So this is the place, Jack thinks, looking it up and down. Dingy, dust-streaked windows reveal its name to be El Torero; the bullfighter. He shakes his head. If this is where Kent wants to eat, so be it.

He opens the door to soft guitar music. To Jack’s relief, the place is very clean and very tiny. There are maybe eight tables, three of them occupied, in the whole restaurant. The exposed brick walls have been painted a buttery yellow, and there’s a mural of some lemon trees overlooking one table.   
“Can I seat you?” asks a stout, grandmotherly woman. 

“Uh,” Jack says, and scratches the back of his neck. “I’m meeting my friend Kent, and he wanted to know if his usual spot was available?” He feels like a massive tool. What a weird Kentlike assumption to make, assuming this family remembered him and where he liked to sit.

To his surprise, though, the woman’s face lights up. 

“You’re a friend of Kent’s?” she asks, and leads him past the regular tables and through a door Jack had assumed led to the kitchen. Instead, it’s a walk-in closet-sized space, with a table and two chairs. 

“Yeah, I’m a, uh, friend of his,” Jack says. “Does he come here often?”

“Whenever his diet allows for it,” she says, a huge grin lighting up her face. She winks.

This is the Twilight Zone. A world in which Kent Parson frequents not the shiniest five-star restaurant in Vegas, but a mom-and-pop place in the suburbs. Where everybody knows his name, Cheers-style. Where someone’s grandma is stuffing him with food and, from the looks of it, pinching his cheeks. Jack shakes his head. 

[](https://imgur.com/cJwoMxH)

“Kent!” Jack hears the woman exclaim, ten minutes later. She sounds more jazzed to see Kent than he thinks Kent’s own mom has ever sounded. The door swings open, and, seconds later, a winded-looking Kent saunters through.

“Hey,” he says, casual, like this isn’t an alternate universe.

Jack just stares at him. Kent sits down after a second of awkward silence, pulling off his suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

“Fuckin’ suits,” he says, unbuttoning the top button of his collar and blousing out his shirt.

He’s fidgeting. Kent has never fidgeted in his life.

“So what exactly--” Jack starts to say, and is interrupted by the kitchen door swinging open, a waiter walking in. Kent’s back is to the door, but Jack sees his shoulders tense as he senses the waiter’s presence.

“Hola, Kent!” the waiter says, walking around to the front of their table and filling two water glasses. “¿Cómo estás esta noche?”

Jack watches, bewildered, as Kent’s neck starts to flush, blood slowly moving to his face. He looks up at the waiter with a further blush and says, in the most gringo-accented Spanish Jack has ever heard, “Estoy bee-en, Carlos. Esto es mi amigo, Jack.”

“Es-te es mi amigo Jack,” the waiter—Carlos—corrects.

“Este es mi amigo Jack,” Kent parrots. His ears are bright red. “Got it.”

“Hi, Jack,” Carlos says in perfect English, flashing Jack a bright white smile. He’s maybe a year or two younger than them, Bitty’s age, and Kent looks at him like he’s the shiniest thing he’s ever seen. He is handsome, objectively, but Kent’s reverence is obvious. “Would you like something else to drink?”

“A margarita,” Jack says, dazed. His eyes flick between them like a tennis match. So Kent is…infatuated? This can’t be just sex. Jack knows what it looks like when Kent is fuck-buddies with someone, he reserves this kind of detached, passive interest. He certainly doesn’t take Jack to meet them. He certainly doesn’t learn Spanish. “And the, uh, number four?”

“Great,” says Carlos. “Y qué te gustaría, Kent?”

“La misma,” Kent says shyly. His cheeks are pink. “Y el chorí pollo, por favor.”

“Bueno,” Carlos says. “Good to meet you, Jack.”

He disappears into the kitchen again, taking their menus with him.

Jack narrows his eyes at Kent, who’s still red and picking determinedly at his hangnail.

“You brought me here to talk about boys,” Jack says, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “You brought me here to meet your crush. Like a fourteen-year-old.”

“I don’t know what you’re—“

“You’re a tomato, Parse,” Jack interrupts. “Or a tomate, as Carlos would say.”

Parse rolls his eyes, trying to be gruff, but he can’t tamp down the goofy smile that seems to erupt straight from his heart.

“What’s with the Spanish?”

“I, uh.” Kent looks embarrassed. “I told him I needed to learn because I was going on a trip.”

“Are you?”

“No,” Kent laughs a little. “I mean, it was a year and a half ago, I just wanted to keep seeing him because he was hot, but it, like. Developed.”

“Are you together?” Jack asks. Partly because he knows the way this game works between them: Jack is supposed to act curious so that Kent can pretend to be annoyed but actually share his feelings. Partly because he actually is curious.

“No,” Kent sighs. He’s still picking at his nails. “I don’t even know if he’s interested.”

“Only one way to find out,” Jack says mildly, though he knows that’s easier said than done.

“Easy for you to s—“ Kent starts, and is interrupted by Carlos coming back in with their drinks. His eyes lock with Kent’s, and the contact between them stretches like bubblegum, saccharine. Jack has never felt more like a third wheel in his life, not even with Shitty and Lardo.

“Gracias,” says Kent. Wonderstruck.

“De nada,” Carlos says, and he sounds a little breathless. Good Lord. He leaves the room again, and Jack takes a savage pleasure in turning to a flustered Kent.   
He’s biting his lip, staring at the drinks Carlos left on the table. He looks more undone than Jack has ever seen him. Jack is pretty sure that he’s never seen Kent as into anyone as he’s into Carlos. And Carlos was looking right back.

But Kent is running his tongue along his teeth, his nervous tell, and Jack feels almost...protective of him like this. Maybe that’s stupid, but Kent doesn’t let himself feel like this very often. Jack knows because he doesn’t, either. 

And when Jack let himself fall in love...it was the best feeling in the entire world. And maybe he wants that for Kent.

“Yeah, I don’t think you have to worry about it being unrequited,” Jack says, eyes twinkling. 

“Yeah?” Kent says, going, impossibly, even redder. “You think?” He avoids Jack’s eyes.

“I think,” Jack says, and Kent gives him a soft, grateful smile, so different from his usual sharklike grin. 

 

Eventually, after their food comes, Jack lets Kent off the hook and turns the conversation off his love life. They have different opinions on the top draft picks this year, and Kent manages to turn a simple disagreement into a thirty-minute debate. They each have another margarita, and towards the tail end of drinking his second, Jack starts feeling a little drunk.

Kent quirks an eyebrow at him, and Jack realizes he’s listing slightly.

“You getting to be a lightweight, Zimms?”

Jack shakes his head, but he doesn’t trust his mouth not to slur if he opens it to say no. He giggles and Kent joins in. 

“So how are you doing?” Kent asks him after they’ve done all they can do to their meals. He sounds like he earnestly wants to know, and Jack hesitates. Vulnerability is hard for them normally, and together...they just know all of each other’s soft spots. Right where to hurt each other.

But Kent took a big step tonight, introducing him to Carlos. Jack guesses that he doesn’t have a lot of friends he’s out to, a lot of people he can be himself around without worrying that it’ll get leaked to Deadspin. Jack figures he can give a little of himself up in return. In the interest of friendship.

“Uh,” Jack starts. He’s not sure if he’s sober enough to articulate it. “Not great. Pretty depressed lately, actually.”

“Like…clinically?” Kent says. He looks concerned. 

“Yeah.”

“In addition to anxiety?” Kent sounds like he thinks that’s a supremely unfair combination, which is how Jack’s kind of felt his whole life. “That blows.”

“It does.”

“Are you, like, doing anything for it?”

“Therapist,” Jack says shortly. 

“And you’re not…” Kent’s voice trails to a whisper. “Using?”

“No,” Jack says. Again, short. He gets why Kent would ask, but. He’s not. He’s past that.

“Good,” Kent says, sounding sheepish. “It’s just…”

“I get it,” Jack interrupts, unwilling to end what had been a pleasant night with a fight. 

They’re silent for a couple of seconds while Kent takes a gulp of his drink. 

“Anyways...how’s everyone? How’s Bitty?” Kent asks.

Jack’s stomach lurches.

“We, ah,” he starts, swallowing the wave of pain Bitty’s name brings up. “We broke up, actually.”

Kent winces. “Shit, sorry. When?”

“January.”

“You over it?” Kent asks. His gaze is watchful, and again, there’s that wave of pain. 

“Not even slightly,” Jack says, hoarse, and has to blink away the truth of that. 

“What happened?” Kent asks, and Jack stares at him, searching for ill will in his face. 

It’s hard for them to ever level with each other. There were so many times Jack stomped on Kent’s heart as a kid, just inexcusably. So Kent has been trying, ever since that final, fatal blow when they were eighteen and Jack overdosed and stopped taking Kent’s calls in rehab, to retaliate. To get as many blows in, to break Jack as bad as he’s been broken. And he’s achieved that, many times, and now he’s just...burying the hatchet? Jack isn’t sure he’s ready to give Kent more ammunition to use against him.  
But this is big of Kent, to introduce Jack to his...whatever Carlos is. To let Jack in, this brief amount. And Jack is kind of drunk, and he finds no malice in Kent’s face, just an earnest sympathy. So Jack talks.

“I think...I don’t know. I think the closet was really what did it. Because Bitty grew up in, like, the deep South, so he spent his entire childhood super closeted. And he came to Samwell ready to finally be out and proud and there I am, the one guy there that couldn’t come out and I felt just...so fuckin’ guilty. Like we’d go on dates but we’d have to hide, I’d have to remind him to tone it down, and that was how he’d spent years, toning it down for everybody else.”  
Jack realizes, too late, that this is probably not the story to tell a commitment-phobe who’s going to have to stay in the closet, but he can’t stop talking at this point. He barrels on after a deep breath.

“It just seems so selfish to ask him to hide, and then he wanted to go to this dance at Samwell. It was something the GSA puts on, and...it was just too risky, so I guess I realized that...that that was going to be our life together. Me holding him back from being who he’s supposed to be. So I broke it off.”

“Fuck,” Kent says softly. He makes a motion like he’s going to reach a hand out to Jack, and then stops it. Jack is grateful he does. They’re not there. “Fuck, Jack, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s been,” Jack sighs. “A pretty shitty year.”

“For what it’s worth,” Kent says. “It didn’t seem like he felt held back. He seemed, like, really in love with you. I thought you were good together.”

“After a while, that just didn’t seem to matter anymore,” Jack says, and oh. That might hurt the worst of anything he’s said tonight. 

“Fuck the fuckin’ closet,” Kent mutters. He looks at the kitchen door behind which Carlos is probably preparing to wait another table. “Fuck needing to stay in it.”

“Fuck people assuming you’re straight in the first place.”

“Amen,” Kent says, and downs the last of his margarita.

**Author's Note:**

> title from belle & sebastian's "piazza, new york catcher"


End file.
